[Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this announcement]

BCS-FACS Evening Seminar Series -- Joint Event with BCSWomen Specialist
Group

           Design verification for control engineering

                 Professor Ursula Martin

               Queen Mary University of London

                    9 November 2006
                    5.45pm start

               BCS London Offices
               First Floor,
               The Davidson Building
               5 Southampton Street
               London WC2E 7HA


In the first part of this talk I'll introduce control engineering as a
new domain of application for formal methods. I'll discuss design
verification, drawing attention to the role played by diagrammatic
evaluation criteria involving numeric plots of a design, such as
Nichols and Bode plots. I'll show that symbolic computation and
computational logic can be used to discharge these criteria and
provide symbolic, automated, and very general alternatives to
these standard numeric tests, and illustrate our work with
reference to a standard reference model drawn from military
avionics.

At the heart of this work is the observation that control systems
based on linear differential equations exhibit "program-like"
phenomena such as loops and sequential composition, which
allows the development of a Hoare-style logic. While trying to
understand this phenomenon we hit upon a new abstract
presentation of Hoare Logic based on categories with feedback,
which can also be used to capture extensions of the standard
Hoare logic for while programs, e.g. the extension with pointer
manipulations via separation logic.

References:

Richard Boulton, Hanne Gottliebsen, Ruth Hardy, Tom Kelsey & Ursula
Martin, "Design Verification for Control Engineering." in Integrated
Formal Methods, 4th International Conference, IFM 2004, Canterbury, UK,

April 4-7, 2004, Lecture Notes in Computer Science vol 2999, pp. 21-35,
Springer 2004.

Ursula Martin, Erik Mathiesen and Paulo Oliva, Hoare Logic in the
abstract, Proceedings of Computer Science Logic Conference 2006.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science vol 4207, 2006, pages 501-515,
Springer 2006

http://springerlink.metapress.com/content/gxj1n2gtq11cly8h/?p=48763561ce3542caac39908fe87202c9&pi=1




http://www.springerlink.com/content/68245wk122px6537/


Refreshments will be served from 5.15pm

The seminar is free of charge and open to everyone. If you would like
to attend, please email Paul Boca [[log in to unmask]] your name by
 >>> 8 Nov 2006 <<<. Pre-registration is required, as security at the
BCS Offices is tight.

Location of the venue: http://www.bcs.org/upload/img/londonsscolour.jpg

FACS Evening Seminars: http://www.bcs-facs.org/events/EveningSeminars

BCSWomen website: http://www.bcs.org.uk/bcswomen/