Technology

Demonstrating SPARK with a Mars Rover (Part 1): Cyber-Physical Systems

Source

ElectronicDesign

Published

Apr 13, 2026

TL;DR

AI Generated

The article discusses how the Ada SPARK programming language is used to develop safety- and security-critical systems, focusing on a Mars Rover Demo platform as a real-life example of a cyber-physical system. The platform integrates embedded software with hardware components to sense surroundings and act in real-time. The article delves into formalizing safety properties, introducing getters for HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), and ensuring the system's integrity. The team demonstrates how SPARK can address safety and reliability issues, emphasizing the importance of formal verification and safety monitoring in high-integrity embedded development.

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Formal Verification Best Practices

Formal verification is a method to ensure hardware designs meet specifications by analyzing all possible states and input combinations. Engineers use assertions, assumptions, and cover properties to guide formal verification processes. Formal verification tools like Questa One SFV from Siemens help identify design limits and provide insights into the logic affecting each property being verified. Best practices include strategically applying formal verification, combining it with simulation, and documenting the process for team members. Formal verification is particularly beneficial for safety-critical or high-reliability designs and becomes more crucial as designs grow in complexity.

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