Testing of combined heating systems for small houses: Improved procedures for whole system test methods : Deliverable 2.3

Dynamic system test methods for heating systems were developed and applied by the institutes SERC and SP from Sweden, INES from France and SPF from Switzerland already before the MacSheep project started. These test methods followed the same principle: a complete heating system – including heat generators, storage, control etc., is installed on the test rig; the test rig software and hardware simulates and emulates the heat load for space heating and domestic hot water of a single family house, while the unit under test has to act autonomously to cover the heat demand during a representative test cycle. Within the work package 2 of the MacSheep project these similar – but different – test methods were harmonized and improved. The work undertaken includes:  • Harmonization of the physical boundaries of the unit under test. • Harmonization of the boundary conditions of climate and load. • Definition of an approach to reach identical space heat load in combination with an autonomous control of the space heat distribution by the unit under test. • Derivation and validation of new six day and a twelve day test profiles for direct extrapolation of test results.   The new harmonized test method combines the advantages of the different methods that existed before the MacSheep project. The new method is a benchmark test, which means that the load for space heating and domestic hot water preparation will be identical for all tested systems, and that the result is representative for the performance of the system over a whole year. Thus, no modelling and simulation of the tested system is needed in order to obtain the benchmark results for a yearly cycle. The method is thus also applicable to products for which simulation models are not available yet. Some of the advantages of the new whole system test method and performance rating compared to the testing and energy rating of single components are:  • Interaction between the different components of a heating system, e.g. storage, solar collector circuit, heat pump, control, etc. are included and evaluated in this test. • Dynamic effects are included and influence the result just as they influence the annual performance in the field. • Heat losses are influencing the results in a more realistic way, since they are evaluated under "real installed" and representative part-load conditions rather than under single component steady state conditions.   The described method is also suited for the development process of new systems, where it replaces time-consuming and costly field testing with the advantage of a higher accuracy of the measured data (compared to the typically used measurement equipment in field tests) and identical, thus comparable boundary conditions. Thus, the method can be used for system optimization in the test bench under realistic operative conditions, i.e. under relevant operating environment in the lab.   This report describes the physical boundaries of the tested systems, as well as the test procedures and the requirements for both the unit under test and the test facility. The new six day and twelve day test profiles are also described as are the validation results.

Evolutionary Testing of Autonomous Software Agents

A system built in terms of autonomous agents may require even greater correctness assurance than one which is merely reacting to the immediate control of its users. Agents make substantial decisions for themselves, so thorough testing is an important consideration. However, autonomy also makes testing harder; by their nature, autonomous agents may react in different ways to the same inputs over time, because, for instance they have changeable goals and knowledge. For this reason, we argue that testing of autonomous agents requires a procedure that caters for a wide range of test case contexts, and that can search for the most demanding of these test cases, even when they are not apparent to the agents’ developers. In this paper, we address this problem, introducing and evaluating an approach to testing autonomous agents that uses evolutionary optimization to generate demanding test cases.

Monitoring thrombin generation by electrochemistry: development of an amperometric biosensor screening test for plasma and whole blood

BACKGROUND: Complete investigation of thrombophilic or hemorrhagic clinical presentations is a time-, apparatus-, and cost-intensive process. Sensitive screening tests for characterizing the overall function of the hemostatic system, or defined parts of it, would be very useful. For this purpose, we are developing an electrochemical biosensor system that allows measurement of thrombin generation in whole blood as well as in plasma. METHODS: The measuring system consists of a single-use electrochemical sensor in the shape of a strip and a measuring unit connected to a personal computer, recording the electrical signal. Blood is added to a specific reagent mixture immobilized in dry form on the strip, including a coagulation activator (e.g., tissue factor or silica) and an electrogenic substrate specific to thrombin. RESULTS: Increasing thrombin concentrations gave standard curves with progressively increasing maximal current and decreasing time to reach the peak. Because the measurement was unaffected by color or turbidity, any type of blood sample could be analyzed: platelet-poor plasma, platelet-rich plasma, and whole blood. The test strips with the predried reagents were stable when stored for several months before testing. Analysis of the combined results obtained with different activators allowed discrimination between defects of the extrinsic, intrinsic, and common coagulation pathways. Activated protein C (APC) predried on the strips allowed identification of APC-resistance in plasma and whole blood samples. CONCLUSIONS: The biosensor system provides a new method for assessing thrombin generation in plasma or whole blood samples as small as 10 microL. The assay is easy to use, thus allowing it to be performed in a point-of-care setting.

Aberrant protective force generation during neural provocation testing and the effect of treatment in patients with neurogenic cervicobrachial pain

Background: Observation of the occurrence of protective muscle activity is advocated in assessment of the peripheral nervous system by means of neural provocation tests. However, no studies have yet demonstrated abnormal force generation in a patient population. Objectives: To analyze whether aberrations in shoulder girdle-elevation force during neural tissue provocation testing for the median nerve (NTPTI) can be demonstrated, and whether possible aberrations can be normalized following cervical mobilization. Study Design: A single-blind randomized comparative controlled study. Setting: Laboratory setting annex in a manual therapy teaching practice. Participants: Twenty patients with unilateral or bilateral neurogenic cervicobrachial pain. Methods: During the NTPTI, we used a load cell and electrogoniometer to record continuously the shoulder-girdle elevation force in relation to the available range of elbow extension. Following randomization, we analyzed the immediate treatment effects of a cervical contralateral lateral glide mobilization technique (experimental group) and therapeutic ultrasound (control group). Results: On the involved side, the shoulder-girdle elevation force occur-red earlier, and the amount of force at the end of the test was substantially, though not significantly, greater than that on the uninvolved side at the corresponding range of motion. Together with a significant reduction in pain perception after cervical mobilization, a clear tendency toward normalization of the force curve could be observed, namely, a significant decrease in force generation and a delayed onset. The control group demonstrated no differences. Conclusions: Aberrations in force generation during neural, provocation testing are present in patients with neurogenic pain and can be normalized with appropriate treatment modalities.

A framework and tool support for the systematic testing of model-based specifications

Formal specifications can precisely and unambiguously define the required behavior of a software system or component. However, formal specifications are complex artifacts that need to be verified to ensure that they are consistent, complete, and validated against the requirements. Specification testing or animation tools exist to assist with this by allowing the specifier to interpret or execute the specification. However, currently little is known about how to do this effectively. This article presents a framework and tool support for the systematic testing of formal, model-based specifications. Several important generic properties that should be satisfied by model-based specifications are first identified. Following the idea of mutation analysis, we then use variants or mutants of the specification to check that these properties are satisfied. The framework also allows the specifier to test application-specific properties. All properties are tested for a range of states that are defined by the tester in the form of a testgraph, which is a directed graph that partially models the states and transitions of the specification being tested. Tool support is provided for the generation of the mutants, for automatically traversing the testgraph and executing the test cases, and for reporting any errors. The framework is demonstrated on a small specification and its application to three larger specifications is discussed. Experience indicates that the framework can be used effectively to test small to medium-sized specifications and that it can reveal a significant number of problems in these specifications.

Automatized Generation of Metadata and Calibrated Test Item Banks for E-learning

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2013

Formal verification and testing of software architectural models

Ensuring the correctness of software has been the major motivation in software research, constituting a Grand Challenge. Due to its impact in the final implementation, one critical aspect of software is its architectural design. By guaranteeing a correct architectural design, major and costly flaws can be caught early on in the development cycle. Software architecture design has received a lot of attention in the past years, with several methods, techniques and tools developed. However, there is still more to be done, such as providing adequate formal analysis of software architectures. On these regards, a framework to ensure system dependability from design to implementation has been developed at FIU (Florida International University). This framework is based on SAM (Software Architecture Model), an ADL (Architecture Description Language), that allows hierarchical compositions of components and connectors, defines an architectural modeling language for the behavior of components and connectors, and provides a specification language for the behavioral properties. The behavioral model of a SAM model is expressed in the form of Petri nets and the properties in first order linear temporal logic.^ This dissertation presents a formal verification and testing approach to guarantee the correctness of Software Architectures. The Software Architectures studied are expressed in SAM. For the formal verification approach, the technique applied was model checking and the model checker of choice was Spin. As part of the approach, a SAM model is formally translated to a model in the input language of Spin and verified for its correctness with respect to temporal properties. In terms of testing, a testing approach for SAM architectures was defined which includes the evaluation of test cases based on Petri net testing theory to be used in the testing process at the design level. Additionally, the information at the design level is used to derive test cases for the implementation level. Finally, a modeling and analysis tool (SAM tool) was implemented to help support the design and analysis of SAM models. The results show the applicability of the approach to testing and verification of SAM models with the aid of the SAM tool.^

Formal verification and testing of software architectural models

Ensuring the correctness of software has been the major motivation in software research, constituting a Grand Challenge. Due to its impact in the final implementation, one critical aspect of software is its architectural design. By guaranteeing a correct architectural design, major and costly flaws can be caught early on in the development cycle. Software architecture design has received a lot of attention in the past years, with several methods, techniques and tools developed. However, there is still more to be done, such as providing adequate formal analysis of software architectures. On these regards, a framework to ensure system dependability from design to implementation has been developed at FIU (Florida International University). This framework is based on SAM (Software Architecture Model), an ADL (Architecture Description Language), that allows hierarchical compositions of components and connectors, defines an architectural modeling language for the behavior of components and connectors, and provides a specification language for the behavioral properties. The behavioral model of a SAM model is expressed in the form of Petri nets and the properties in first order linear temporal logic. This dissertation presents a formal verification and testing approach to guarantee the correctness of Software Architectures. The Software Architectures studied are expressed in SAM. For the formal verification approach, the technique applied was model checking and the model checker of choice was Spin. As part of the approach, a SAM model is formally translated to a model in the input language of Spin and verified for its correctness with respect to temporal properties. In terms of testing, a testing approach for SAM architectures was defined which includes the evaluation of test cases based on Petri net testing theory to be used in the testing process at the design level. Additionally, the information at the design level is used to derive test cases for the implementation level. Finally, a modeling and analysis tool (SAM tool) was implemented to help support the design and analysis of SAM models. The results show the applicability of the approach to testing and verification of SAM models with the aid of the SAM tool.

Extending Automated Testing To High-level Software Requirements : A study on the feasibility of automated acceptance-testing

Automated acceptance testing is the testing of software done in higher level to test whether the system abides by the requirements desired by the business clients by the use of piece of script other than the software itself. This project is a study of the feasibility of acceptance tests written in Behavior Driven Development principle. The project includes an implementation part where automated accep- tance testing is written for Touch-point web application developed by Dewire (a software consultant company) for Telia (a telecom company) from the require- ments received from the customer (Telia). The automated acceptance testing is in Cucumber-Selenium framework which enforces Behavior Driven Development principles. The purpose of the implementation is to verify the practicability of this style of acceptance testing. From the completion of implementation, it was concluded that all the requirements from customer in real world can be converted into executable specifications and the process was not at all time-consuming or difficult for a low-experienced programmer like the author itself. The project also includes survey to measure the learnability and understandability of Gherkin- the language that Cucumber understands. The survey consist of some Gherkin exam- ples followed with questions that include making changes to the Gherkin exam- ples. Survey had 3 parts: first being easy, second medium and third most difficult. Survey also had a linear scale from 1 to 5 to rate the difficulty level for each part of the survey. 1 stood for very easy and 5 for very difficult. Time when the partic- ipants began the survey was also taken in order to calculate the total time taken by the participants to learn and answer the questions. Survey was taken by 18 of the employers of Dewire who had primary working role as one of the programmer, tester and project manager. In the result, tester and project manager were grouped as non-programmer. The survey concluded that it is very easy and quick to learn Gherkin. While the participants rated Gherkin as very easy.

Test vector generation for the phase II ATLAS event filter trigger upgrade

In the near future, the LHC experiments will continue to be upgraded as the LHC luminosity will increase from the design 1034 to 7.5 × 1034, with the HL-LHC project, to reach 3000 × f b−1 of accumulated statistics. After the end of a period of data collection, CERN will face a long shutdown to improve overall performance by upgrading the experiments and implementing more advanced technologies and infrastructures. In particular, ATLAS will upgrade parts of the detector, the trigger, and the data acquisition system. It will also implement new strategies and algorithms for processing and transferring the data to the final storage. This PhD thesis presents a study of a new pattern recognition algorithm to be used in the trigger system, which is a software designed to provide the information necessary to select physical events from background data. The idea is to use the well-known Hough Transform mathematical formula as an algorithm for detecting particle trajectories. The effectiveness of the algorithm has already been validated in the past, independently of particle physics applications, to detect generic shapes in images. Here, a software emulation tool is proposed for the hardware implementation of the Hough Transform, to reconstruct the tracks in the ATLAS Trigger and Data Acquisition system. Until now, it has never been implemented on electronics in particle physics experiments, and as a hardware implementation it would provide overall latency benefits. A comparison between the simulated data and the physical system was performed on a Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGA device.

Vertical Bone Measurements From Cone Beam Computed Tomography Images Using Different Software Packages.

This article aimed at comparing the accuracy of linear measurement tools of different commercial software packages. Eight fully edentulous dry mandibles were selected for this study. Incisor, canine, premolar, first molar and second molar regions were selected. Cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) images were obtained with i-CAT Next Generation. Linear bone measurements were performed by one observer on the cross-sectional images using three different software packages: XoranCat®, OnDemand3D® and KDIS3D®, all able to assess DICOM images. In addition, 25% of the sample was reevaluated for the purpose of reproducibility. The mandibles were sectioned to obtain the gold standard for each region. Intraclass coefficients (ICC) were calculated to examine the agreement between the two periods of evaluation; the one-way analysis of variance performed with the post-hoc Dunnett test was used to compare each of the software-derived measurements with the gold standard. The ICC values were excellent for all software packages. The least difference between the software-derived measurements and the gold standard was obtained with the OnDemand3D and KDIS3D (-0.11 and -0.14 mm, respectively), and the greatest, with the XoranCAT (+0.25 mm). However, there was no statistical significant difference between the measurements obtained with the different software packages and the gold standard (p> 0.05). In conclusion, linear bone measurements were not influenced by the software package used to reconstruct the image from CBCT DICOM data.

A Functional Verification Methodology Based on Parameter Domains for Efficient Input Stimuli Generation and Coverage Modeling

Modern Integrated Circuit (IC) design is characterized by a strong trend of Intellectual Property (IP) core integration into complex system-on-chip (SOC) architectures. These cores require thorough verification of their functionality to avoid erroneous behavior in the final device. Formal verification methods are capable of detecting any design bug. However, due to state explosion, their use remains limited to small circuits. Alternatively, simulation-based verification can explore hardware descriptions of any size, although the corresponding stimulus generation, as well as functional coverage definition, must be carefully planned to guarantee its efficacy. In general, static input space optimization methodologies have shown better efficiency and results than, for instance, Coverage Directed Verification (CDV) techniques, although they act on different facets of the monitored system and are not exclusive. This work presents a constrained-random simulation-based functional verification methodology where, on the basis of the Parameter Domains (PD) formalism, irrelevant and invalid test case scenarios are removed from the input space. To this purpose, a tool to automatically generate PD-based stimuli sources was developed. Additionally, we have developed a second tool to generate functional coverage models that fit exactly to the PD-based input space. Both the input stimuli and coverage model enhancements, resulted in a notable testbench efficiency increase, if compared to testbenches with traditional stimulation and coverage scenarios: 22% simulation time reduction when generating stimuli with our PD-based stimuli sources (still with a conventional coverage model), and 56% simulation time reduction when combining our stimuli sources with their corresponding, automatically generated, coverage models.

Formal derivation of finite state machines for class testing

Previous work on generating state machines for the purpose of class testing has not been formally based. There has also been work on deriving state machines from formal specifications for testing non-object-oriented software. We build on this work by presenting a method for deriving a state machine for testing purposes from a formal specification of the class under test. We also show how the resulting state machine can be used as the basis for a test suite developed and executed using an existing framework for class testing. To derive the state machine, we identify the states and possible interactions of the operations of the class under test. The Test Template Framework is used to formally derive the states from the Object-Z specification of the class under test. The transitions of the finite state machine are calculated from the derived states and the class's operations. The formally derived finite state machine is transformed to a ClassBench testgraph, which is used as input to the ClassBench framework to test a C++ implementation of the class. The method is illustrated using a simple bounded queue example.