On Using Composability Tools for Reliability analysis of Unmanned Multi-aircraft Systems: a Case Study

Abstract

This paper presents a case study that demonstrates how tools from compositional verification can be used to design and analyze complex multi-agent systems operating in dynamic and uncertain environments. The case study concerns the design of an unmanned multi-aircraft system tasked to compromise an aerial encroacher by deploying countermeasures. The constituent agents, termed defenders, are fixed-wing unmanned aircraft. To successfully compromise the encroacher, at least one defender must be within a prespecified distance from the encroacher for a certain period, and the defenders must avoid collision among themselves and with the encroacher. Verifying this global property using monolithic (system-level) verification techniques is a challenging task due to the complexity of the components (defenders) and the interactions among them. To overcome these challenges, the components are designed to have a modular architecture, thereby enabling the use of component-based reasoning to simplify the task of verifying the global system property. Results from Euclidean geometry and formal methods are used to prove most component properties. For properties where analytical tools are overly conservative, focused Monte Carlo simulations are carried out. Restricting the use of simulations (or testing) to local verification of partial component properties leads to increasing the reliability of the system. © 2013 IEEE.