Periodic Reporting for period 4 - POWVER (Power to the People. Verified.)
Reporting period: 2021-03-01 to 2021-08-31
But at the same time, proprietary embedded software locks us out of the products we own.
A modern electronic device can only be controlled and maintained by its user to the extent enabled by the proprietary embedded software running the device.
POWVER addresses this problem as its central concern.
It provides technology to break open the traditional embedded software development process, so as to empower device users to gain back control over their devices.
To make this possible, POWVER provides them with quantitative verification technology for system level correctness, safety, dependability and performability of open embedded software.
In this endeavour, it focusses on embedded software for power management. Electric power is vital for mobile devices and their longevity.
The spearhead application is electrified mobility, but the technology developed is general enough to enable deeper analysis of other mobility problems including ordinary (combustion powered) road traffic.
It develops quantitative verification technology for system-level correctness, safety, dependability, and performability, with a focus on power management software.
This is a long-term effort, in which the following highly successful spearhead actions have been in our focus:
• We have designed a method for the optimal control of power-hungry nano-satellites in low earth orbit, with a battery-aware scheduling approach based on stochastic kinetic battery models. It is being tailored to actual satellites currently orbiting the earth in low orbit.
• We have contributed to the standardisation of charging infrastructure and charger interoperability for light electric vehicles, and have developed dedicated software tools for testing testing the various infrastructure components.
• We have carried out a rigorous verification and model-based testing of an electrically assisted dandy horse built by us as a focal point for our verification-centric research agenda.
• We have pioneered the use of model-based testing and runtime monitoring for discovering the existence of software doping in diesel cars. This is made available to the masses of car owners in the form of an open-source free-to-use smartphone app.
• Executable formalisation of real driving emissions (RDE) as regards emissions from light passenger and commercial vehicles, spelled out in EU Commission Regulation 2016/427.
• Analysis platform and smartphone app for RDE characteristics and its relation to ordinary road traffic based on crowd-sourced data.
• Fully automated robust optimal control of constellations and mega-constellations of satellites under complex power constraints.
• Quantitative verification technology for system-level correctness, safety, dependability, and performability, applicable to a range of embedded problems related to power-awareness.