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Test Solutions for Simulink Models & Production Code

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Test Solutions for Simulink Models & Production Code

Products

BTC EmbeddedSpecifier

Intuitive formal specification of safety requirements

Step into the formal world with ease

What if your computer could understand your requirements?

BTC EmbeddedSpecifier allows you to create and manage semi-formal and formal requirements for safety-critical projects.

While a semi-formal and formal notation of requirements is recommended in standards like ISO 26262 and IEC 61508, reading and writing most formal notation languages require a high level of expert knowledge. BTC EmbeddedSpecifier provides you with an intuitive graphical method to derive comprehensive formal requirements from natural language without expert knowledge.

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Formalized Requirements = Better Requirements

In most development projects today, requirements are created and managed using informal natural language. 

As natural language typically leaves some room for interpretation, there’s the possibility that function developers or test engineers ultimately implement a different behavior than intended. 

With a semi-formal or formal notation in BTC EmbeddedSpecifier, you can transform your safety requirements into a clear, unambiguous and machine-readable representation – improving their quality and making them much more valuable for the following steps in the development workflow.

Intuitive graphical language

Universal Pattern

From our perspective, formal notations have not gained more acceptance in embedded development projects for two primary reasons:

Formal languages like LTL are often considered to be too difficult to use
They do not provide enough traceability towards existing informal requirements.

With Universal Pattern, we address both issues efficiently. The graphical representation serves as an editor and at the same time as documentation, making the formal requirement easy to create, understand and review. We could call this “Model-based Requirements Engineering”.

A typical formalization workflow starts with the import of existing natural language requirements. The intuitive user interface guides you through the formalization process in three main steps:

Group

In the first step, individual expressions or events within the requirement are identified as so-called “macros.”

Group Copy 2

In a second step, these macros get graphically structured to define their relationship and timing behavior. 

Group Copy 3

In the last workflow step, the macros are mapped to real interface objects of the system-under-test – making the requirement formal and machine-readable.

Finally a meaningful definition

Requirement Coverage

With natural language requirements, the definition of requirement coverage is always a tricky question. How can we be sure that a test case really covers its linked requirement? How can we be sure that one test case is enough to fully cover a requirement?

The answer to these questions typically relies on manual reviews.

Based on the Universal Pattern specification method, we provide a meaningful and mathematically sound definition of requirements coverage. This coverage is automatically evaluated and reported for a given set of test cases. In case of uncomplete coverage, you can even generate missing test cases fully automatically.

100% Automated

Formalized Requirements = Higher Quality

Thanks to the machine-readable nature of the formalized requirements, you can directly use them within several verification use cases and dramatically improve the quality and completeness of the verification process:

Formal Test

In a traditional requirements-based testing process, each test case is only evaluated against the requirement from which is was derived. But what if test case N°5 violates requirement N°10? Formal Test performs an automatic cross check of all test cases against all formalized requirements. This allows you to detect side effects without any additional testing effort.

Automatic Test Generation

Should a particular formal requirement not be fully covered by existing test cases, the Requirements-based Test Generation add-on allows generating missing test cases automatically, providing you 100% coverage for all requirements.

Formal Verification

Thanks to our powerful model checking technology, you can automatically obtain mathematically complete proof which guarantees a safety requirement can never be violated by your implementation. In case a requirement can be violated, we generate a counter example in the form of a test case.

certified

ISO 26262

BTC EmbeddedPlatform (incl. BTC EmbeddedTester BASE, BTC EmbeddedTester, BTC EmbeddedSpecifier and BTC EmbeddedValidator) has been certified by German TÜV Süd as fit for usage in safety critical software development projects. 

The certificate addresses different standards including IEC 61508-3:3010, ISO 26262, EN 50128, IEC 62304 as well as ISO 25119.

For the automotive standard ISO 26262, we have been certified with the highest tool confidence level TCL and the certificate is valid for all ASIL levels including ASIL D. 

We provide the certificate and the corresponding report to our customers free of charge upon request, which almost eliminates any effort for tool qualification measures on the customer side. 

ISO 26262 Certificate

Request an Evaluation License

If you would like to try out our tools, we will gladly provide an evaluation license free of chargeEvaluations include a free launch workshop and also provide an opportunity for you to meet one-on-one with our support and engineering teams.

Schedule a Meeting with our Engineering Team

Do you have any questions or want to see our tools in action? If so, please use the link below to schedule a meeting, where a member of our engineering team will be happy to show you the features and use cases and directly answer any questions you might have.

Request an Evaluation License​

If you would like to try out our tools, we will gladly provide an evaluation license free of chargeEvaluations include a free launch workshop and also provide an opportunity for you to meet one-on-one with our support and engineering teams.

Schedule a Meeting with our Engineering Team

Do you have any questions or want to see our tools in action? If so, please use the link below to schedule a meeting, where a member of our engineering team will be happy to show you the features and use cases and directly answer any questions you might have.

BTC EMBEDDED SYSTEMS BLOG

From our Blog

Sharing insights on embedded software development, model-based design, automatic code generation and ISO 26262 compliant testing.

PRODUCT VIDEOS, VIDEO BLOG & WEBINARS

Videos & Webinars

Discover some of the main features of our products in these short videos.

BTC EmbeddedValidator

The power of proof for safety-critical systems