You Can’t Get There From Here!

摘要

The explosion of capabilities and new products withinrnthe sphere of Information Technology (IT) has fosteredrnwidespread, overly optimistic opinions regarding the industry,rnbased on common but unjustified assumptions of qualityrnand correctness of software. These assumptions are encouragedrnby software producers and vendors, who at thisrnlate date have not succeeded in finding a way to overcomernthe lack of an automated, mathematically sound way to developrncorrect systems from requirements. NASA faces thisrndilemma as it envisages advanced mission concepts that involvernlarge swarms of small spacecraft that will engage cooperativelyrnto achieve science goals. Such missions entailrnlevels of complexity that beg for new methods for systemrndevelopment far beyond today’s methods, which are inadequaternfor ensuring correct behavior of large numbers ofrninteracting intelligent mission elements. New system developmentrntechniques recently devised through NASA-ledrnresearch will offer some innovative approaches to achievingrncorrectness in complex system development, including autonomousrnswarm missions that exhibit emergent behavior,rnas well as general software products created by the computingrnindustry.