Verification of Automated Vehicle Protection Systems

We apply speciication and veriication techniques based on the timed I/O automaton model of Lynch and Vaandrager to a case study in the area of automated transit. The case study models and veriies selected safety properties for automated Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) systems such as PRT 2000 TM , a system currently being developed at Raytheon. Due to their safety critical nature, PRT 2000 TM and many other automated transit systems divide the control architecture into operation and protection subsystems. The operation system handles the normal control of vehicles. The protection system maintains safety by monitoring and possibly taking infrequent but decisive action. In this work, we present both a high-level treatment of a generic protection system and more detailed examinations of protection systems that enforce speed limits and vehicle separation.