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Formal verification of mobile robot protocols

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Abstract

Mobile robot networks emerged in the past few years as a promising distributed computing model. Existing work in the literature typically ensures the correctness of mobile robot protocols via ad hoc handwritten proofs, which, in the case of asynchronous execution models, are both cumbersome and error-prone. Our contribution is twofold. We first propose a formal model to describe mobile robot protocols operating in a discrete space i.e., with a finite set of possible robot positions, under synchrony and asynchrony assumptions. We translate this formal model into the DVE language, which is the input format of the model-checkers DiVinE and ITS tools, and formally prove the equivalence of the two models. We then verify several instances of two existing protocols for variants of the ring exploration in an asynchronous setting: exploration with stop and perpetual exclusive exploration. For the first protocol we refine the correctness bounds and for the second one, we exhibit a counter-example. This protocol is then modified and we establish the correctness of the new version with an inductive proof.

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to anonymous referees for their careful reading and suggestions that were a great help for improving the presentation of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UPMC Univ Paris 06, CNRS, LIP6 UMR 7606, Sorbonne Universités, 4 place Jussieu, 75005, Paris, France

    Béatrice Bérard, Laure Millet, Maria Potop-Butucaru, Yann Thierry-Mieg & Sébastien Tixeuil

  2. CNRS, LIMOS, UMR 6158, University Clermont Auvergne, Clermont, France

    Pascal Lafourcade

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  1. Béatrice Bérard
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  2. Pascal Lafourcade
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  3. Laure Millet
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  6. Sébastien Tixeuil
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Correspondence to Laure Millet.

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Bérard, B., Lafourcade, P., Millet, L. et al. Formal verification of mobile robot protocols. Distrib. Comput. 29, 459–487 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00446-016-0271-1

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