ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Robot. AI
Sec. Computational Intelligence in Robotics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frobt.2025.1592523
This article is part of the Research TopicRobotics Software EngineeringView all 10 articles
A Model-Based Approach to Automation of Formal Verification of ROS 2-Based Systems
Provisionally accepted
- Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden
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This article presents an approach to automate model-based formal verification of ROS 2-based applications using model-driven engineering techniques. We introduce a toolchain that supports the verification of both implemented and conceptual ROS 2 systems, as well as the iterative verification of timing and scheduling parameters. Our methodology begins with ROS 2 execution traces generated by ROS2 tracing tool, and employs models and model transformations in Eclipse to automatically initialize pre-defined formal model templates in UPPAAL with system parameters. The toolchain utilizes four different model representations based on ROS2 tracing output and custom-designed Eclipse Ecore metamodels to model the system from both structural and verification perspectives. To demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our approach, we implement a proof of concept that includes the core elements of the proposed toolchain and allows verification with two different UPPAAL models. Our experiments demonstrate that the toolchain can be adapted to perform various types of verification, and can become a feasible solution to ensure the correctness of ROS 2 systems. The UPPAAL models used in the article for verification of individual nodes are taken from related work. Furthermore, we create UPPAAL models for verification of end-to-end latency of ROS 2 processing chains. The approach presented in this paper aims to make formal verification more accessible to robotics developers, by reducing the complexity and manual effort involved. Furthermore, the created model representations ensure traceability throughout the modeling and verification process.
Keywords: ROS 2, Robotic Systems, Formal Verification, model checking, Model-based engineering
Received: 12 Mar 2025; Accepted: 16 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dust, Gu, Mubeen, Ekström and Seceleanu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lukas Johannes Dust, Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden
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