Prototype of Automated PLC Model Checking Using Continuous Integration Tools

To deal with the complexity of operating and supervising large scale industrial installations at CERN, often Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are used. A failure in these control systems can cause a disaster in terms of economic loses, environmental damages or human losses. Therefore the requirements to software quality are very high. To provide PLC developers with a way to verify proper functionality against requirements, a Java tool named PLCverif has been developed which encapsulates and thus simplifies the use of third party model checkers. One of our goals in this project is to integrate PLCverif in development process of PLC programs. When the developer changes the program, all the requirements should be verified again, as a change on the code can produce collateral effects and violate one or more requirements. For that reason, PLCverif has been extended to work with Jenkins CI in order to trigger automatically the verication cases when the developer changes the PLC program. This prototype has been used in real-life PLC programs at CERN and its potential have been recognized.