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A Modular Framework for Modelling and Verification of Activities in Ambient Intelligent Systems

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Digital Human Modeling and Applications in Health, Safety, Ergonomics and Risk Management (HCII 2023)

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Abstract

There is a growing need to introduce and develop formal techniques for computational models capable of faithfully modelling systems of high complexity and concurrent. Such systems are the ambient intelligent systems. This article proposes an efficient framework for the automated modelling and verification of the behavioural models capturing daily activities that occur in ambient intelligent systems based on the modularity and compositionality of Petri nets. This framework consists of different stages that incorporate Petri net techniques like composition, transformation, unfolding and slicing. All these techniques facilitate the modelling and verification of the system activities under consideration by allowing the modelling in different Petri net classes and the verification of the produced models either by using model checking directly or by applying Petri net slicing to alleviate the state explosion problem that may emerge in very complex behavioural models. Illustrative examples of ambient intelligent system applied to health and other sectors are provided to demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed approach. Finally, to show the flexibility of the proposed framework in terms of verification, both an evaluation and comparison of the state space required for the property checking are conducted with respect to the typical model checking and slicing approach respectively.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For further reading, the APN and T-APN semantics are provided in [25].

  2. 2.

    The inscriptions are presented in terms of colour sets.

  3. 3.

    Guards are applied to all the transitions, but it is considered that every \(t \in T_{NG}\) is a transition with ‘no guard’ since as its enabledness is not affected by the guard value, which is constantly set to true.

  4. 4.

    These tasks are usually parts/steps of assisted living activities.

  5. 5.

    The notation can be extended to: \(p \in {}^\bullet \epsilon \) and \(p \in \epsilon ^\bullet \).

  6. 6.

    So now the user executing some existing transition \(t \in g_2^\bullet \) in \(\mathcal {N}'\) will not be able to proceed without ‘taking the instructions’ from the system following the execution of transition \(t_s\).

  7. 7.

    In the definition of backward composition, as in Definition 5, \(\mathcal {N}\) is a general APN net.

  8. 8.

    \(p_s\) and \(p_f\) are the starting and finishing places of \(\mathcal {N}_3\).

  9. 9.

    Composed out of n basic or one step nets and a root net.

  10. 10.

    An inhibitor place is always a control place but not the other way around.

  11. 11.

    If it is considered that its only step place, e.g., \(p^0\), is both starting and finishing place of \(\epsilon \).

  12. 12.

    \(T_G\) consists of all those transitions of the T-APN net that are associated with transitions of the APN net that have inhibitor places. The remaining transitions of the T-APN net belong to \(T_{NG}\).

  13. 13.

    The last case is a special case of the first one.

  14. 14.

    This happens to maintain the behaviour of \(\mathcal {N}\) in the T-APN net \(\varphi (\mathcal {N})\).

  15. 15.

    From Definition 10(ii) and Equation \((\star )\) follows that \(T_{STEP} = T_G\) and \(T_{EM} \cup T_R = T_{NG}\).

  16. 16.

    Informally, reading transitions do not change the marking of a net place, while non-reading transitions can change it [33].

  17. 17.

    Neutral transitions remove and add the same no. of tokens from and to its incoming and outgoing place respectively [20].

  18. 18.

    SLiM reads/exports unfolded nets using the Petri Net Markup Language (PNML) defined by the standard ISO/IEC 15909.

  19. 19.

    The case studies and properties can be found in [27].

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

    Alexandros Konios

  2. HORIBA MIRA Ltd., Nuneaton, UK

    Yasir Imtiaz Khan

  3. Ulster University, Belfast, UK

    Matias Garcia-Constantino

  4. CICESE (Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada), Ensenada, Mexico

    Irvin Hussein Lopez-Nava

Authors
  1. Alexandros Konios
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  2. Yasir Imtiaz Khan
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  3. Matias Garcia-Constantino
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  4. Irvin Hussein Lopez-Nava
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Correspondence to Alexandros Konios .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Vincent G. Duffy

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Konios, A., Khan, Y.I., Garcia-Constantino, M., Lopez-Nava, I.H. (2023). A Modular Framework for Modelling and Verification of Activities in Ambient Intelligent Systems. In: Duffy, V.G. (eds) Digital Human Modeling and Applications in Health, Safety, Ergonomics and Risk Management. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14029. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35748-0_35

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