Control software analysis, Part I Open-loop properties

Abstract: As the digital world enters further into everyday life, questions are raised about the increasing challenges brought by the interaction of real-time software with physical devices. Many accidents and incidents encountered in areas as diverse as medical systems, transportation systems or weapon systems are ultimately attributed to "software failures". Since real-time software that interacts with physical systems might as well be called control software, the long litany of accidents due to real-time software failures might be taken as an equally long list of opportunities for control systems engineering. In this paper, we are interested only in run-time errors in those pieces of software that are a direct implementation of control system specifications: For well-defined and well-understood control architectures such as those present in standard textbooks on digital control systems, the current state of theoretical computer science is well-equipped enough to address and analyze control algorithms. It appears that a central element to these analyses is Lyapunov stability theory, which translate into invariant theory in computer implementations.