ISSSR 2026 Keynote 3
AI-Enhanced Safety Critical Software Development
Abstract
Safety-critical software in domains such as aviation and aerospace is predominantly developed under the model-driven development (MDD) paradigm, which enables early defect detection and systematic quality assurance, and is widely regarded as a best engineering practice for high-assurance systems. The associated development toolchains must strictly follow Verification and Validation (V&V) processes and comply with certification standards such as DO-330 for tool qualification and DO-178C for airborne safety-critical software.
Traditional model-driven approaches, however, face challenges including low modeling efficiency and high verification and testing costs. The rapid advancement of large language models is reshaping software engineering practices. A central question for both industry and academia is how to effectively integrate AI technologies into safety-critical software development processes under stringent safety and regulatory constraints, while improving both productivity and quality.
This keynote proposes a “Model-Driven + AI-Enhanced” paradigm, exploring intelligent modeling, automatic code generation, AI-assisted verification, and automated test-case generation for safety-critical software, along with an integrated toolchain framework that supports full lifecycle traceability. Finally, it outlines promising future directions toward certifiable AI-enabled development methodologies and highly trustworthy engineering practices.
Speaker
Professor Chunming Hu China
Dean, School of Software
Beihang University
Prof. Chunming Hu, Dean of the School of Software at Beihang University, China, has a B.Eng (CS, 2000) and Ph.D. (CS, 2006) from the School of Computer Science & Engineering at Beihang University. He has been working at Beihang University as a faculty member since 2006. His main research interests include large-scale distributed systems, software engineering, system virtualization, and resource scheduling in cloud/big data systems. He is a Distinguished Member of the China Computer Federation (CCF) and the Vice Chair of the System Software Technical Committee at CCF. He has published over 110 academic papers in related research fields. For years, he has been working closely with the aeronautic and astronautic industries on developing methods and tools for model-driven safety-critical software systems.
