Project details

In the Bavarian-Czech project ‘DeepMBT’, led by Professor Gordon Fraser, researchers from the Universities of Passau and Prague are investigating how artificial intelligence methods can be used to find software errors more effectively and automatically.

Software systems have become an integral part of our everyday lives. "However, the frequent news reports about software failures with dramatic consequences show that existing methods for quality assurance in software development are inadequate", says Professor Gordon Fraser, Chair of Software Engineering II at the University of Passau. With a cross-border research team from Passau and the Technical University of Prague, led by Doc. Ing. Miroslav Bureš, Ph.D., he has set out to break new ground in software quality testing. In the project ‘DeepMBT: New ways to software quality with model-based testing and artificial intelligence’, funded by the Bavarian-Czech University Agency (BTHA), the researchers are developing fully automated testing methods.

Model-based testing describes the use of abstractions to test software faster, more cost-effectively and more accurately. Even though the effectiveness of this approach is known, the practical implementation is hindered by complex abstraction and synthesis steps, explains Professor Fraser. The aim of the project is therefore to meet this challenge by automating the abstraction and synthesis using artificial intelligence (AI) methods. The resulting fully automated test methods should therefore lead to fewer software errors.

Project successful in Bavarian-Czech competition

The project was one of 15 high-calibre Bavarian-Czech projects that prevailed in a competitive selection process. The projects selected from a total of 96 proposals started on 1 July 2024 and will be funded over a period of two and a half years with up to 3.5 million euros on the Bavarian side and a corresponding volume on the Czech side.

The research focus of the programme, which was announced in autumn 2023, was on the topics of the Bavarian High-Tech Agenda Bavaria and comes from the fields of information technologies, artificial intelligence, material sciences and nanotechnologies as well as cultural and social sciences.

The programme is intended in particular to connect young scientists from both countries and encourage them to engage in further cooperation at national and international level. For Bavaria, the programme is administered by the BTHA on behalf of the Ministry of Science, for the Czech Republic by the local Ministry of Education.

This text was machine-translated from German.