Basic Formal Verification of aWaypoint Manager for Unmanned Air Vehicles in SPARK

Abstract

As software becomes more complex, it becomes more difficult to verify its correctness. This poses a particular problem for autonomous systems, since they are software-intensive and will also require strong evidence of correctness in order to be allowed to operate in the real world. One way to help address this problem is through the use of formal methods, i.e. mathematically-based tools for software and hardware verification. In this paper, we perform formal program verification on a service in OpenUxAS, a free and open source software framework for mission-level, multi-vehicle autonomy. More specifically, we apply the SPARK language and verification toolset to a service that sanity-checks and segments long sequences of vehicle waypoints to prove that it is free of runtime errors.