Learning test generators for cyber-physical systems

Black-box runtime verification methods for cyber-physical systems can be used to discover errors in systems whose inputs and outputs are expressed as signals over time and their correctness requirements are specified in a temporal logic. Existing methods, such as requirement falsification, often focus on finding a single input that is a counterexample to system correctness. In this paper, we study how to create test generators that can produce multiple and diverse counterexamples for a single requirement. Several counterexamples expose system failures in varying input conditions and support the root cause analysis of the faults. We present the WOGAN algorithm to create such test generators automatically. The algorithm works by training iteratively a Wasserstein generative adversarial network that models the target distribution of the uniform distribution on the set of counterexamples. WOGAN is an algorithm that trains generative models that act as test generators for runtime verification. The training is performed online without the need for a previous model or dataset. We also propose criteria to evaluate such test generators. We evaluate the trained generators on several well-known problems including the ARCH-COMP falsification benchmarks. Our experimental results indicate that generators trained by the WOGAN algorithm are as effective as state-of-the-art requirement falsification algorithms while producing tests that are as diverse as a sample from uniform random sampling. We conclude that WOGAN is a viable method to produce test generators automatically and that these test generators can generate multiple and diverse counterexamples for the runtime verification of cyber-physical systems.