Table-based formal specification approaches for control engineers—empirical studies of usability

IF 1.7 Q3 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS

IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory and Applications Pub Date : 2021-05-26 DOI:10.1049/cps2.12017

Suhyun Cha, Birgit Vogel-Heuser, Alexander Weigl, Mattias Ulbrich, Bernhard Beckert

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The dependability characteristic of the control software of manufacturing systems is highlighted more than before, going through repeated changes to cope with various and varying requirements. Formal methods are researched to be applied to automation system engineering to obtain a more effective and efficient quality assurance. One of the approaches, a formal specification language named Generalised Test Tables has been developed with the aim of intuitiveness and accessibility for automation application developers. The result of the experiments conducted to assess the usability of this language is presented here. Focussing on evaluating effectiveness and user satisfaction, three paper-based experiments have been conducted with students at the bachelor and master level. The evaluation results point to positive usability in both comparative effectiveness to conventional language, that is, Petri Nets, and subjective perception of user satisfaction.

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面向控制工程师的基于表格的形式化规范方法——可用性的实证研究

制造系统控制软件的可靠性特点比以往更加突出，需要经过反复修改以应对各种不同的要求。研究了形式化方法在自动化系统工程中的应用，以获得更有效和高效的质量保证。其中一种方法是一种名为通用测试表的正式规范语言，其目的是为自动化应用程序开发人员提供直观性和可访问性。本文给出了评估该语言可用性的实验结果。以评估有效性和用户满意度为重点，在本科和硕士阶段的学生中进行了三个基于纸张的实验。评估结果表明，无论是相对于传统语言(即Petri网)的有效性，还是用户满意度的主观感知，都具有积极的可用性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory and Applications Computer Science-Computer Networks and Communications

CiteScore

5.40

自引率

6.70%

发文量

审稿时长

19 weeks