This paper examines the verification of stability, a control requirement, over discrete control systems represented as Simulink diagrams, using different model checking approaches and tools. Model checking comprises the (exhaustive) exploration of a model of a system, to determine if a requirement is satisfied. If that is not the case, examples of the requirement's violation within the system's model are provided, as witnesses. These examples are potentially complementary to previous work on automatic theorem proving, when a system is not proven to be stable, but no proof of instability can be provided. We experimentally evaluated the suitability of four model checking approaches to verify stability on a set of benchmarks including linear and nonlinear, controlled and uncontrolled, discrete systems, via Lyapunov's second method or Lyapunov's direct method. Our study included symbolic, bounded, statistical and hybrid model checking, through the open-source tools NuSMV, UCLID, S-TaLiRo and SpaceEx, respectively. Our experiments and results provide an insight on the strengths and limitations of these model checking approaches for the verification of control requirements for discrete systems at Simulink level. We found that statistical model checking with S-TaLiRo is the most suitable option to complement our previous work on automatic theorem proving.
In this paper we report on work in progress to extend the QuantUM approach to support the quantitative property analysis of Matlab Simulink Stateflow models. We propose a translation of Simulink Stateflow models to CTMCs which can be analyzed using the PRISM model checker inside the QuantUM tool. We also illustrate how the information needed to perform probabilistic analysis of dependability properties can be specified at the level of the Simulink Stateflow model. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach using a case study taken from the MathWorks examples library. This paper concerns computational methods for verifying properties of polyhedral invariant hybrid automata (PIHA), which are hybrid automata with discrete transitions governed by polyhedral guards. To verify properties of the state trajectories for PIHA, the planar switching surfaces are partitioned to define a finite set of discrete states in an approximate quotient transition system (AQTS). State transitions in the AQTS are determined by the reachable states, or flow pipes, emitting from the switching surfaces according to the continuous dynamics. This paper presents a method for computing polyhedral approximations to flow pipes. It is shown that the flow-pipe approximation error can be made arbitrarily small for general nonlinear dynamics and that the computations can be made more efficient for affine systems. The paper also describes CheckMate, a MATLAB-based tool for modeling, simulating and verifying properties of hybrid systems based on the computational methods previously described.