Formal Models in Software Development and Deployment: A Case Study

Modeling, implementation, and testing are integral parts of system development process. Models usually serve for description of system architecture and behavior and are automatically or manually transformed into executable models or code in a programming language. Tests can be performed on implemented code or executable models; it depends on used design methodology. Although models can be transformed, the designer has to usually adapt resulted code manually. It can result in an inconsistency among design models and their realization and the further development, testing and debugging by means of prime models is impossible. This work summarizes the design methodology based on the formalism of Object Oriented Petri Nets combined with Discrete Event System Specification and demonstrates its usage in the system development and deployment on the simple robotic system case study. The goal is to use the same formalisms for system modeling as well as for system implementation, so that to keep designed models in the deployed system.