Applying Restricted English Grammar on Automotive Requirements - Does it Work? A Case Study

[Context and motivation] For an automatic consistency check on requirements the requirements have to be formalized first. However, logical formalisms are seldom accessible to stakeholders in the automotive context. Konrad and Cheng proposed a restricted English grammar that can be automatically translated to logics, but looks like natural language. [Question/problem] In this paper we investigate whether this grammar can be applied in the automotive domain, in the sense that it is expressive enough to specify automotive behavioral requirements. [Principal ideas/results] We did a case study over 289 informal behavioral requirements taken from the automotive context. We evaluated whether these requirements could be formulated in the grammar and whether the grammar has to be adapted to the automotive context. [Contribution] The case study strongly indicates that the grammar, extended with 3 further patterns, is suited to specify automotive behavioral requirements of BOSCH.