Recommended Citation
August 1, 2010.
Abstract
Automated Theorem Provers (ATPs), are computer programs that use collections of axioms,which are logical statements assumed to be true, in order to prove conjectures. NASA uses these programs to verify safety and functional requirements in domains like Guidance, Navigation, and Control. There are about 30 axioms on each major topic including the theory of coordinate systems, elementary arithmetic and linear algebra. These axioms have been created over the duration of many projects and combined into a single file. One task is to manage the axioms by arranging them into logical sections, deleting unnecessary ones and rewriting some into a more general case. This will help reduce the time required to run the provers, resulting in a more efficient program. When testing a conjecture, verification conditions (VCs) are generated to prove a safety requirement. The VCs then produce dynamic axioms which are sent to the provers along with the original VCs and the static axioms. They are then run through the prover, producing a pass or fail for the conjecture. Each change done to the axiom file must be checked in order to verify that the conjectures are still proven true.
Disciplines
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics | Other Mathematics
Mentor
Ewen Denney
Lab site
NASA Ames Research Center (ARC)
Funding Acknowledgement
This material is based upon work supported by the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation and by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0952013. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation or the National Science Foundation.
URL: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/star/71