Statechart testing method for aircraft control systems

A number of current control systems for aircraft have been specified with statecharts. The risk of failures requires the use of a formal testing approach to ensure that all possible faults are considered. However, testing the compliance of an implementation of a system to its specification is dependent on the specification method and little work has been reported relating to the use of statechart-specific methods. This paper describes a modification of a formal testing method for extended finite-state machines to handle the above problem. The method allows one to demonstrate correct behaviour of an implementation of some system, with respect to its specification, provided certain specific requirements for both of them are satisfied, The case study illustrates these and shows the applicability of the method. By considering the process used to develop the system it is possible to reduce the size of the test set dramatically; the method to be described is easy to automate. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.