Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2001

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

Committee Chair

Bojan Cukic.

Abstract

Failures of high consequence systems are intolerable. Studies have shown that a significant percentage of safety problems can be traced back to errors in the specification. An important problem that arises during validation is how to include a domain expert in this process. Although the domain experts have exclusive knowledge about the system operation, they may not understand formalisms used for system specification.;Essential type of "evidence" of the correctness of the formalization process must be provided by human-based calculation. Human calculation can be significantly amplified by shifting from symbolic representation to graphical representations. This, in turn, provides an environment for validation of the system model.;We have developed a virtual environment model for the Production Cell robotic system, which runs in an ImmersaDesk Virtual Reality environment. Although it introduces higher cost in the requirements formalization phase, this approach can be very beneficial in the development of high consequence systems.

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