Improving Code Quality in ROS Packages Using a Temporal Extension of First-Order Logic

Robots are given more and more challenging tasks in domains such as transport and delivery, farming or health. Software is key components for robots, and ROS is a popular open-source middleware for writing robotics applications. Code quality matters a lot because a poorly written software is much mo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:2018 Second IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC) pp. 1 - 8
Main Authors: Come, David, Brunel, Julien, Doose, David
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Published: IEEE 01.01.2018
Subjects:
C++ languages
code quality
Engines
formal methods
logic
robotics
Robots
ROS
Safety
Semantics
Software
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Summary:Robots are given more and more challenging tasks in domains such as transport and delivery, farming or health. Software is key components for robots, and ROS is a popular open-source middleware for writing robotics applications. Code quality matters a lot because a poorly written software is much more likely to contain bugs and will be harder to maintain over time. Within a code base, finding faulty patterns takes a lot of time and money. We propose a framework to search automatically user-provided faulty code patterns. This framework is based on FO++, a temporal extension of first-order logic, and Pangolin, a verification engine for C++ programs. We formalized with FO++ five faulty patterns related to ROS and embedded systems. We analyzed with Pangolin 25 ROS packages looking for occurrences of these patterns and found a total of 218 defects. To prevent the faulty patterns from arising in new ROS packages, we propose a design pattern, and we show how Pangolin can be used to enforce it.
DOI:10.1109/IRC.2018.00010