Introspection-Based Verification and Validation

Future missions of deep-space exploration will require an on-board computational capability that can support autonomy and enhanced science processing. The integration of emerging commodity multi-core technology into space-borne systems can provide the required performance; however, protecting such systems against faults has become a critical research issue. In this paper we present an approach to fault tolerance based on a newly developed introspection framework that supports runtime monitoring of program execution and feedback-oriented recovery. We discuss the relationship of this approach to traditional Verification and Validation (V&V) and propose methods for the automatic generation of assertions from static and dynamic analysis.