About Pierluigi Nuzzo

Pierluigi Nuzzo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. Before joining UC Berkeley, he was the Kenneth C. Dahlberg Chair and an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Southern California. He received a PhD degree from UC Berkeley, and BS and MS degrees from the University of Pisa and the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa. He also held research positions at the University of Pisa and IMEC, Leuven, Belgium, working on mixed-signal integrated circuit design. His research revolves around high-assurance design of cyber-physical systems and systems-on-chip, spanning the whole spectrum from the mathematical foundations to design tools and applications, with emphasis on compositional methods for system design and requirement engineering. His research interests include methodologies and tools for the design, verification, and certification of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, and the analysis and design of secure and trustworthy hardware platforms. His awards include the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA) Ernest S. Kuh Early Career Award, the Okawa Research Grant, the IEEE Technical Committee on Cyber-Physical Systems Early-Career Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the UC Berkeley EECS David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize, and several best paper and design competition awards.

Abstract

Assume-Guarantee Contracts for Trustworthy Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems

Increasingly more sophisticated tasks that were previously allocated to humans are expected to be performed by software, including modern artificial intelligence (AI) methods, in a variety of mission-critical cyber-physical systems, for example, in avionics, automobiles, robotics, and manufacturing. One of the biggest challenges to trustworthy autonomy is arguably in showing that these software and AI-enabled autonomous functions, running on heterogeneous, interconnected sensing, computation, and actuation platforms, will still satisfy the stringent safety and dependability requirements of mission-critical systems in uncertain or unpredictable environments. In this talk, I will introduce our approach to design-time assurance for autonomous cyber-physical systems, leveraging the rich modeling and specification formalism of assume-guarantee contracts and their probabilistic extensions. I will present how contracts enable compositional, quantitative requirement analysis and system verification in the presence of uncertainty as well as correct-by-construction, logically constrained decision-making and learning under uncertainty. I will then discuss how contracts can provide the semantic foundation for the automated construction of assurance cases, structured arguments about system dependability, which can accelerate system certification and help transition from a process-driven to a property-driven and evidence-based certification approach. Finally, I’ll conclude with a vision, mediated by contracts, for continuous assurance of intelligent autonomous systems.

About Current Trends in Computer Science

This lecture is part of the Current Trends in Computer Science Lecture Series by the TU Wien Informatics Doctoral School, where renowned Guest Professors hold public lectures every semester. If you are studying with us, the lecture series can be credited as an elective course for students of master programs of computer science: 195.072 Current Trends in Computer Science. Additionally, you can join courses held by this year’s Guest Professors of our doctoral colleges and the TU Wien Informatics Doctoral School.

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