Model checking: one can do much more than you think!

Model checking is an automated verification technique that actively is applied to find bugs in hardware and software designs. Companies like IBM and Cadence developed their in-house model checkers, and acted as driving forces behind the design of the IEEE-standardized temporal logic PSL. On the other hand, model checking C-, C#- and .NET-program code is an intensive research topic at, for instance, Microsoft and NASA. In this short paper, we briefly discuss three non-standard applications of model checking. The first example is taken from systems biology and shows the relevance of probabilistic reachability. Then, we show how to determine the optimal scheduling policy for multiple-battery systems so as to optimize the system’s lifetime. Finally, we discuss a stochastic job scheduling problem that —thanks to recent developments— can be solved using model checking.