Automated Repair of Requirements for Cyber-Physical Systems in Simulink Requirements Tables

The development of complex software systems, e.g., cyber-physical systems (CPSs), involves continuous evolution of both system implementations and their requirements. These two artifacts often proceed independently, creating a risk of misalignment. For example, a system may be updated due to implementation-level concerns, yielding a new version that no longer satisfies its original requirements. Traditional compliance recovery techniques, e.g., automated program repair, address this problem by modifying the system while assuming that requirements are correct. However, faulty, outdated or inadequate requirements are a well-documented challenge in practice, motivating the complementary task of requirement repair. In this paper, we propose a framework that leverages system execution data to repair misaligned CPS requirements, thereby restoring requirement-to-system compliance. Our approach evaluates the correctness of declarative requirements over time-based, real-valued signals expressed using the MATLAB Simulink Requirements Tables language. We evaluate seven variants of our framework on six real-world case studies covering 12 requirements. Results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed framework in producing correct and useful repaired requirements.

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Publication Details

Journal
Proceedings of the ACM on software engineering.
Published
2026-06-30
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/3808208
Primary Topic
Software System Performance and Reliability
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Automated Repair of Requirements for Cyber-Physical Systems in Simulink Requirements Tables

Claudio Menghi, Alessio Di Sandro, Aren A. Babikian, Federico Formica et al.
Proceedings of the ACM on software engineering.
Software System Performance and Reliability
article

Automated Repair of Requirements for Cyber-Physical Systems in Simulink Requirements Tables

Claudio Menghi, Alessio Di Sandro, Aren A. Babikian, Federico Formica, Marsha Chećhik
article en

Abstract

The development of complex software systems, e.g., cyber-physical systems (CPSs), involves continuous evolution of both system implementations and their requirements. These two artifacts often proceed independently, creating a risk of misalignment. For example, a system may be updated due to implementation-level concerns, yielding a new version that no longer satisfies its original requirements. Traditional compliance recovery techniques, e.g., automated program repair, address this problem by modifying the system while assuming that requirements are correct. However, faulty, outdated or inadequate requirements are a well-documented challenge in practice, motivating the complementary task of requirement repair. In this paper, we propose a framework that leverages system execution data to repair misaligned CPS requirements, thereby restoring requirement-to-system compliance. Our approach evaluates the correctness of declarative requirements over time-based, real-valued signals expressed using the MATLAB Simulink Requirements Tables language. We evaluate seven variants of our framework on six real-world case studies covering 12 requirements. Results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed framework in producing correct and useful repaired requirements.

Proceedings of the ACM on software engineering.Vol. 3(FSE)
University of Bergamo (IT), University of Toronto (CA), McMaster University (CA)
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Peace, Justice and strong institutions
Openalex Percentile: Top 6%
Software System Performance and Reliability
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