Developing Fault-Tolerant Control Systems Composed of Self-Checking Components in the Action Systems Formalism

It is widely recognized that a high degree of dependability of computer-based systems can be achieved if dependability consideration starts from the early stages of system development [10]. In this paper we propose an approach for incorporating means for fault-tolerance in the component-based system development. We discuss architecture of a fault-tolerant system based on a composition of so called self-checking components [9]. Self-checking components are designed in such a way that besides providing the intended functionality they can also detect errors in their own functioning. Upon detection of an error a fault tolerant system should reconfigure itself to mitigate consequences of error occurrence. We discuss failsafe reconfiguration mechanism.