Research

MT-LAB aims at solving the problems imposed by IT-systems becoming embedded in the world around us: how can we make sure that they behave safely and give us an acceptable performance?

Examples are plentiful: The introduction of the chip-based version of the Danish payment card suffered from poor performance, intelligent houses require careful interaction with changes in light and temperature to provide a pleasant ambience, and treatment of patients at home without specialist involvement puts extra demands on ensuring proper medical treatment.

 MT-LAB approaces these problems by developing formal models of the IT systems of interest, by giving precise logical statements of our expectations, and developing algorithms for determining the degree of compliance.

The research extends the usual treatment of discrete models (think of a form for tax returns) with notions of stochastic behaviour (think of the time spent waiting in a queue) and continuous behaviour (think of the sensors controlling the ABS brakes). It approaches the problem by identifying three themes that contrast the complementary knowledge of the participating researchers: theme 1 on the methodology used, theme 2 on the application domain and theme 3 on the ability to reduce a complex problem to many small problems .

Further details can be found in the research plan and the progress reports: from the first year, from the second year, from the third year, from the comprehensive midterm report, and from the fourth year.