ReForm: A Tool for Rapid Requirements Formalization

Abstract

Formal methods practices can sometimes be challenging to adopt in industrial environments. On the other hand, the need for formalization and verification in the design of complex systems is now more evident than ever. To the end of easing integration of formal methods in industrial model based system engineering workflows, UTRC Ireland has developed a tool aiming to render requirements formalization as effortless as possible to the industrial engineer. The developed approach is an end-to-end solution, starting with natural language requirements as input and going all the way down to auto-generated monitors in MATLAB / Simulink. We employ natural language processing and machine learning techniques for (semi-)automatic pattern extraction from requirements, which drastically reduces the required formalization workload for both legacy and new requirements. For monitor generation, we provide our own approach which outperforms existing state-of-the-art tools by orders of magnitude in some cases.