Work

Automated Repair of Requirements for Cyber-Physical Systems in Simulink Requirements Tables

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: The development of complex software systems, e.g., cyber-physical systems (CPSs), involves continuous evolution of both system implementations and their requirements. These two artifacts often proceed independently, creating a risk of misalignment. For example, a system may be updated due to implementation-level concerns, yielding a new version that no longer satisfies its original requirements. Traditional compliance recovery techniques, e.g., automated program repair, address this problem by modifying the system while assuming that requirements are correct. However, faulty, outdated or inadequate requirements are a well-documented challenge in practice, motivating the complementary task of requirement repair. In this paper, we propose a framework that leverages system execution data to repair misaligned CPS requirements, thereby restoring requirement-to-system compliance. Our approach evaluates the correctness of declarative requirements over time-based, real-valued signals expressed using the MATLAB Simulink Requirements Tables language. We evaluate seven variants of our framework on six real-world case studies covering 12 requirements. Results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed framework in producing correct and useful repaired requirements.

Source: Proceedings of the ACM on software engineering.

DOI: 10.1145/3808208

Authors: Aren A. Babikian, Alessio Di Sandro, Federico Formica, Claudio Menghi, Marsha Chechik

Institutions: University of Toronto, McMaster University, University of Bergamo

Language: English

Topic: Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies

Subfield: Artificial Intelligence

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

Award: G6137744194