Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2203.12138

A Search-Based Framework for Automatic Generation of Testing Environments for Cyber-Physical Systems

Dmytro Humeniuk·Foutse Khomh·Giuliano Antoniol
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Many modern cyber physical systems incorporate computer vision technologies, complex sensors and advanced control software, allowing them to interact with the environment autonomously. Testing such systems poses numerous challenges: not only should the system inputs be varied, but also the surrounding environment should be accounted for. A number of tools have been developed to test the system model for the possible inputs falsifying its requirements. However, they are not directly applicable to autonomous cyber physical systems, as the inputs to their models are generated while operating in a virtual environment. In this paper, we aim to design a search based framework, named AmbieGen, for generating diverse fault revealing test scenarios for autonomous cyber physical systems. The scenarios represent an environment in which an autonomous agent operates. The framework should be applicable to generating different types of environments. To generate the test scenarios, we leverage the NSGA II algorithm with two objectives. The first objective evaluates the deviation of the observed system behaviour from its expected behaviour. The second objective is the test case diversity, calculated as a Jaccard distance with a reference test case. We evaluate AmbieGen on three scenario generation case studies, namely a smart-thermostat, a robot obstacle avoidance system, and a vehicle lane keeping assist system. We compared three configurations of AmbieGen: based on a single objective genetic algorithm, multi objective, and random search. Both single and multi objective configurations outperform the random search. Multi objective configuration can find the individuals of the same quality as the single objective, producing more unique test scenarios in the same time budget.

Explore related subjects

cs.NE

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Dmytro Humeniuk, Foutse Khomh, Giuliano Antoniol. 2022-03-23. A Search-Based Framework for Automatic Generation of Testing Environments for Cyber-Physical Systems. https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.12138

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Breaking the Central Bias: Spatially Partitioned Experts for Coordinate-Based Neuroevolution

Evolvable-Substrate HyperNEAT (ES-HyperNEAT), a bio-inspired indirect encoding that determines neuron placement and connection weights from spatial coordinates, exhibits a failure mode on MNIST as a diagnostic benchmark. Because input pixels map to a coordinate space centered at the origin, evolved networks converge on a small central cluster of input pixels, a spatial-concentration bias; prior work observed only 21% mean accuracy in this regime. Is this bias an optimization artifact or an architectural ceiling? Inspired by Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) principles, we partition the input into non-overlapping spatial segments, each assigned to a separately evolved specialist network. With 13 such experts, this design reaches 43% mean accuracy, a 106% relative improvement over the baseline. The architectural gain does not depend on data-driven aggregation: equal-weighted averaging, which uses no validation data, already yields a 70% improvement; the gain comes from partitioning, not the weighting. Receptive-field analysis shows the mechanism: partitioning forces evolution to discover features across the entire image, expanding active pixel coverage from 4% to 79%. Absolute accuracy stays below gradient-trained baselines, but the relative gain points to central bias, not the evolutionary search. Two tools are designed to generalize beyond MNIST: a receptive-field diagnostic for silent input-coverage collapse, and a spatial-partitioning remedy that restores coverage.

cs.NE↗
arXiv2026

A Bio-Plausible Visual Neural Network for Locust-Inspired Collision Perception

Locust visual systems have long served as an important biological paradigm for studying looming perception and collision avoidance. Numerous computational models have successfully reproduced the selective responses of Lobula Giant Movement Detector (LGMD) neurons to approaching objects, thereby emulating the fundamental functionality of the biological system. However, existing models remain limited in biological plausibility and robustness when operating in complex and dynamic visual environments. To address these limitations, we propose a biologically plausible neural network for locust-inspired looming detection. The proposed framework incorporates a spatially isotropic sampling strategy that mimics the ommatidial organization of the locust compound eye, a population-voting mechanism inspired by population coding in biological neural systems, and leaky integrate-and-fire neuronal dynamics to replace conventional sigmoid-based membrane activation. Systematic experiments on synthetic stimuli, laboratory sequences, and real-world driving scenarios demonstrate that the proposed model improves robustness under challenging visual conditions while preserving computational efficiency and enhancing biological fidelity. These results highlight the potential of biologically grounded neural computation for robust and efficient collision perception.

cs.NE↗
arXiv2026

Structural Fusion of Bayesian Networks with Limited Treewidth Using Genetic Algorithms

This paper introduces an evolutionary computation approach for consensus in structural Bayesian Network (BN) fusion under the constraint of limited treewidth. The consensus BN aims to reconcile multiple input BNs into a single one that retains key structural features present in the original networks. Treewidth, a graph-based parameter associated with computationally tractable inference, is utilized to restrict the complexity of the resulting network. A genetic algorithm is proposed to look for a BN that codifies as much information about the unrestricted fusion as possible while ensuring the treewidth restriction. Experimental evaluation demonstrates the genetic algorithm's ability to obtain consensus BNs with limited treewidth, providing a valuable tool for aggregating information from diverse sources while returning a computationally actionable model.

cs.NE↗