Software behaviour

Cyber‑physical systems are becoming more complex. They evolve continuously, face stricter requirements, integrate more components, and belong to diverse product families.

Software lies at the heart of these systems. As the ‘cyber’ part, it enables innovative, value‑adding features. However, release cycles are shortening, while customers expect high quality and uptime. There is also a shortage of skilled engineers and domain experts.

This makes ensuring functional correctness more difficult. Managing risks and delivering new releases regularly is increasingly challenging. Organizations must work smarter to deliver correct software efficiently and on time.

TNO-ESI helps tackle these challenges through its expertise in modelling and analysis of software behaviour. Together with our partners, we develop advanced methods and tools for model-driven software engineering that ensures high quality. Our approach combines formal modelling and analysis methods to guarantee correct functional system behaviour, with a strong focus on software correctness.

Our focus areas

Models as the authoritative source of truth

We enable engineers and architects to create detailed models of systems, their variants, requirements, components, and behaviour using appropriate modelling languages. These models unambiguously consolidate knowledge, reduce reliance on experts, and stay up-to-date. From these authoritative models, we automatically generate artifacts, such as functional logic, code, documentation, and tests, ensuring they are correct-by-construction.

Cost-effective quality engineering

We combine complementary methods, such as correct-by-construction artifact generation, simulation, model checking, model-based testing, and runtime monitoring, to efficiently and effectively establish correctness early in the development process. Where full automation is infeasible, we balance first-time-right delivery with cost efficiency, ensuring a cost-effective approach to quality.

Risk-managed software evolution

By analysing behavioural aspects and their interrelations across system levels, we make the impact of changes transparent. With computer-assisted insights, engineers and architects can confidently adapt systems to evolving demands, reducing regressions, managing risks, and delivering new software releases that function correctly.

Further information

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