An Aircraft Electric Power Testbed for Validating Automatically Synthesized Reactive Control Protocols

Abstract

Modern aircraft increasingly rely on electric power for subsystems that have traditionally run on mechanical power. The complexity and safety-criticality of aircraft electric power systems have therefore increased, rendering the design of these systems more challenging. This work is motivated by the potential that correct-by-construction reactive controller synthesis tools may have in increasing the effectiveness of the electric power system design cycle. In particular, we have built an experimental hardware platform that captures some key elements of aircraft electric power systems within a simplified setting. We intend to use this platform for validating the applicability of theoretical advances in correct-by-construction control synthesis and for studying implementation-related challenges. We demonstrate a simple design workflow from formal specifications to auto-generated code that can run on software models and be used in hardware implementation. We show some preliminary results with different control architectures on the developed hardware testbed.