Using Simulation, Fault Injection and Property-Based Testing to Evaluate Collision Avoidance of a Quadcopter System

Abstract

In this work we use our testing platform based on FaultCheck and QuickCheck that we apply on a quad copter simulator. We have used a hardware platform as the basis for the simulator and for deriving realistic fault models for our simulations. The quad copters have a collision-avoidance mechanism that shall take over control when the situation becomes hazardous, steer away from the potential danger and then give control back to the pilot, thereby preventing collisions regardless of what the pilot does. We use our testing platform to randomly generate thousands of simulations with different input stimuli (using QuickCheck) for hundreds of quad copters, while injecting faults simultaneously (using FaultCheck). This way, we can effectively adjust system parameters and enhance the collision-avoidance mechanism.