Reactive synthesis is an automated procedure to obtain a correct-by-construction reactive system from a given declarative, temporal specification. Examples of these systems include the software controllers of robotic systems. Despite recent advancements on the theory and algorithms of reactive synthesis, e.g., efficient synthesis for the GR(1) fragment of linear temporal logic, many challenges remain in bringing reactive synthesis technologies to the hands of software engineers. The SYNTECH project is about bridging this gap. It addresses challenges that relate to the change from writing code to writing specifications, and the development of tools to support a specification-centric rather than a code-centric software development process. In this talk I will give an overview of the SYNTECH project’s results from the last five years. These include the Spectra specification language and Spectra Tools, a synthesizer and related analyses aiming at helping engineers write better specifications for synthesis. I will also present the application of Spectra to classic problems as well as to autonomous Lego robots and some example simulated systems, as developed by undergraduate computer science students in project classes we have taught. Finally, I will discuss new challenges and research opportunities.

The talk will cover results from papers in ESEC/FSE’15, ESEC/FSE’16, ESEC/FSE’17, ICSE’19, and FM’19. Joint work with Gal Amram, Elizabeth Firman, Aviv Kuvent, Or Pistiner, Jan O. Ringert, and Rafi Shalom. The project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 638049, SYNTECH). For more information, see http://smlab.cs.tau.ac.il/syntech/.