Via technewsbase
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Hungry penguins have inspired a novel way of making sure computer code in smart cars does not crash.
Tools based on the way the birds co-operatively hunt for fish are
being developed to test different ways of organising in-car software.
The tools look for safe ways to organise code in the same way that penguins seek food sources in the open ocean.
Experts said such testing systems would be vital as cars get more connected.
Engineers have often turned to nature for good solutions to tricky
problems, said Prof Yiannis Papadopoulos, a computer scientist at the
University of Hull who developed the penguin-inspired testing system.
The way ants pass messages among nest-mates has helped telecoms firms
keep telephone networks running, and many robots get around using
methods of locomotion based on the ways animals move.
‘Big society’
Penguins were another candidate, said Prof Papadopoulos, because
millions of years of evolution has helped them develop very efficient
hunting strategies.
This was useful behaviour to copy, he said, because it showed that
penguins had solved a tricky optimisation problem – how to ensure as
many penguins as possible get enough to eat.
“Penguins are social birds and we know they live in colonies that are
often very large and can include hundreds of thousands of birds. This
raises the question of how can they sustain this kind of big society
given that together they need a vast amount of food.
“There must be something special about their hunting strategy,” he
said, adding that an inefficient strategy would mean many birds starved.
Prof Papadopoulos said many problems in software engineering could be
framed as a search among all hypothetical solutions for the one that
produces the best results. Evolution, through penguins and many other
creatures, has already searched through and discarded a lot of bad
solutions.
Studies of hunting penguins have hinted at how they organised themselves.
“They forage in groups and have been observed to synchronise their
dives to get fish,” said Prof Papadopoulos. “They also have the ability
to communicate using vocalisations and possibly convey information about
food resources.”
The communal, co-ordinated action helps the penguins get the most out
of a hunting expedition. Groups of birds are regularly reconfigured to
match the shoals of fish and squid they find. It helps the colony as a
whole optimise the amount of energy they have to expend to catch food.
“This solution has generic elements which can be abstracted and be
used to solve other problems,” he said, “such as determining the
integrity of software components needed to reach the high safety
requirements of a modern car.”
Integrity in this sense means ensuring the software does what is
intended, handles data well, and does not introduce errors or crash.
By mimicking penguin behaviour in a testing system which seeks the
safest ways to arrange code instead of shoals of fish, it becomes
possible to slowly zero in on the best way for that software to be
structured.
The Hull researchers, in conjunction with Dr Youcef Gheraibia, a
postdoctoral researcher from Algeria, turned to search tools based on
the collaborative foraging behaviour of penguins.
The foraging-based system helped to quickly search through the many
possible ways software can be specified to home in on the most optimal
solutions in terms of safety and cost.
Currently, complex software was put together and tested manually,
with only experience and engineering judgement to guide it, said Prof
Papadopoulos. While this could produce decent results it could consider
only a small fraction of all possible good solutions.
The penguin-based system could crank through more solutions and do a better job of assessing which was best, he said.
Under pressure
Mike Ahmadi, global director of critical systems security at
Synopsys, which helps vehicle-makers secure code, said modern car
manufacturing methods made optimisation necessary.
“When you look at a car today, it’s essentially something that’s put together from a vast and extended supply chain,” he said.
Building a car was about getting sub-systems made by different
manufacturers to work together well, rather than being something made
wholly in one place.
That was a tricky task given how much code was present in modern cars, he added.
“There’s about a million lines of code in the average car today and there’s far more in connected cars.”
Carmakers were under pressure, said Mr Ahmadi, to adapt cars quickly
so they could interface with smartphones and act as mobile entertainment
hubs, as well as make them more autonomous.
“From a performance point of view carmakers have gone as far as they
can,” he said. “What they have discovered is that the way to offer
features now is through software.”
Security would become a priority as cars got smarter and started
taking in and using data from other cars, traffic lights and online
sources, said Nick Cook from software firm Intercede, which is working
with carmakers on safe in-car software.
“If somebody wants to interfere with a car today then generally they
have to go to the car itself,” he said. “But as soon as it’s connected
they can be anywhere in the world.
“Your threat landscape is quite significantly different and the opportunity for a hack is much higher.”
