Time to Learn – Learning Timed Automata from Tests

Abstract

Model learning has gained increasing interest in recent years. It derives behavioural models from test data of black-box systems. The main advantage offered by such techniques is that they enable model-based analysis without access to the internals of a system. Applications range from fully automated testing over model checking to system understanding. Current work focuses on learning variations of finite state machines. However, most techniques consider discrete time. In this paper, we present a novel method for learning timed automata, finite state machines extended with real-valued clocks. The learning method generates a model consistent with a set of timed traces collected via testing. This generation is based on genetic programming, a search-based technique for automatic program creation. We evaluate our approach on (Formula Presented) timed systems, comprised of four systems from the literature (two industrial and two academic) and (Formula Presented) randomly generated examples.