Explicit modelling and synthesis of debuggers for hybrid simulation languages

Any sufficiently complex system is best described (or specified) with a combination of models in multiple formalisms. To support the creation of such “hybrid models”, recent research focuses on the (syntactic and semantic) combination of formalism fragments. To implement the hybrid language’s operational semantics, the simulators of each of the formalisms are combined. Inspired by this same principle, we study how hybrid simulators can be instrumented with debugging capabilities. Previous work has shown that an explicit model of any simulator’s behaviour can be instrumented with common code debugging operations (e.g., stepwise execution, breakpoints, pause/play) and simulation-specific operations (such as (scaled) real-time simulation, or event injection). We extend this work by combining two debugging-enhanced simulators to create a hybrid simulator in a modular way, and instrument it with debugging support at the hybrid level. To demonstrate feasibility, we create a debugging-enhanced simulator of the Hybrid Automata formalism, by embedding a Causal Block Diagrams simulator in a Timed Finite State Automata simulator.