Hierons, R. orcid.org/0000-0002-4771-1446 and Mousavi, M.R. (Accepted: 2025) Complete FSM testing using strong separability. In: 29th International Conference on Foundations of Software Science and Computation Structures (FoSSaCS 2026). FoSSaCS 2026: 29th International Conference on Foundations of Software Science and Computation Structures, 11-16 Apr 2026, Turin, Italy. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. ISSN: 0302-9743. EISSN: 1611-3349. (In Press)
Abstract
Apartness is a concept developed in constructive mathematics, which has resurfaced in the areas of model learning and model-based testing. We identify some fundamental shortcomings of apartness in quantitative models, such as in hybrid and stochastic systems. We propose a closely-related alternative, called strong separability and show that using it to replace apartness addresses the identified shortcomings. We adapt a well-known complete model-based testing method, the Harmonized State Identifiers (HSI) method, to adopt strong separability. We prove that the adapted HSI method is complete. As far as we are aware, this is the first work to show how complete test suites can be generated for quantitative models such as those found in the development of cyber-physical systems.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Proceedings Paper |
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| Authors/Creators: |
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| Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2026 The Author(s). |
| Keywords: | Finite state machine testing; cyber-physical systems; apartness; strong separability |
| Dates: |
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| Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
| Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Computer Science (Sheffield) |
| Funding Information: | Funder Grant number UK Research and Innovation EP/V026801/2 |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Jan 2026 16:09 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Jan 2026 16:09 |
| Status: | In Press |
| Publisher: | Springer |
| Series Name: | Lecture Notes in Computer Science |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Related URLs: | |
| Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:236622 |
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Filename: FSM_Testing_Without_Apartness__FoSSaCS.pdf

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