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From High-Level Types to Low-Level Monitors: Synthesizing Verified Runtime Checkers for MAVLink

  • Arthur Amorim
  • , Paul Gazzillo
  • , Max Taylor
  • , Lance Joneckis
  • University of Central Florida
  • Idaho National Laboratory

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

Abstract

Standard communication protocols for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), such as MAVLink, lack the capability to enforce the contextual validity of message sequences. Autopilots therefore remain vulnerable to stealthy attacks, where syntactically correct but semantically ill-timed commands induce unsafe states without triggering physical anomaly detectors. Prior work (DATUM) demonstrated that global Refined Multiparty Session Types (RMPSTs) are an effective specification language for centralized MAVLink protocol enforcement, but suffered from two engineering failures: manual proof terms interleaved with protocol definitions, and an OCaml extraction backend whose managed runtime is incompatible with resource-constrained UAV hardware. We present Platum, a framework that addresses both failures with a minimal DSL requiring only the five semantic components of a global session type (sender, receiver, label, payload variable, refinement predicate), whose structural well-formedness conditions are confirmed via reflective decision procedures in Meta-F*. Confirmed specifications are compiled directly into flat, allocation-free C Finite State Machines (FSMs), deployed as centralized proxy monitors at the GCS/UAV communication boundary. Our evaluation demonstrates a 4× reduction in total monitor latency and lower memory overhead compared to DATUM, measured via ArduPilot SITL simulation.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationNASA Formal Methods - 18th International Symposium, NFM 2026, Proceedings
EditorsJyotirmoy Deshmukh, Klaus Havelund, Alessandro Pinto
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages99-119
Number of pages21
ISBN (Print)9783032280787
DOIs
StatePublished - 2026
Event18th International Symposium on NASA Formal Methods, NFM 2026 - Los Angeles, United States
Duration: 5 May 2026 → 7 May 2026

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science
Volume16622 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference18th International Symposium on NASA Formal Methods, NFM 2026
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityLos Angeles
Period5/05/26 → 7/05/26

Keywords

  • Formal Methods
  • MAVLink
  • Protocol Synthesis
  • Runtime Verification
  • Session Types
  • UAV Security

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