Patents by Inventor Greg Timothy Sullivan

Greg Timothy Sullivan has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Automatic correction of program logic
    Patent number: 8788884
    Abstract: An approach to detection and repair of application level semantic errors in deployed software includes inferring aspects of correct operation of a program. For instance, a suite of examples of operations that are known or assumed to be correct are used to infer correct operation. Further operation of the program can be compared to results found during correct operation and the logic of the program can be augmented to ensure that aspects of further examples of operation of the program are sufficiently similar to the examples in the correct suite. In some examples, the similarity is based on identifying invariants that are satisfied at certain points in the program execution, and augmenting (e.g., “patching”) the logic includes adding tests to confirm that the invariants are satisfied in the new examples. In some examples, the logic invokes an automatic or semi-automatic error handling procedure if the test is not satisfied.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 7, 2010
    Date of Patent: July 22, 2014
    Assignees: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, BAE Systems Information and Electronic Systems Integration Inc.
    Inventors: Jeff Herbert Perkins, Stylianos Sidiroglou, Martin Conway Rinard, Eric Patrick Lahtinen, Paolo Mario Piselli, Basil C Krikeles, Timothy Alan Anderson, Greg Timothy Sullivan
  • AUTOMATIC CORRECTION OF PROGRAM LOGIC
    Publication number: 20120144227
    Abstract: An approach to detection and repair of application level semantic errors in deployed software includes inferring aspects of correct operation of a program. For instance, a suite of examples of operations that are known or assumed to be correct are used to infer correct operation. Further operation of the program can be compared to results found during correct operation and the logic of the program can be augmented to ensure that aspects of further examples of operation of the program are sufficiently similar to the examples in the correct suite. In some examples, the similarity is based on identifying invariants that are satisfied at certain points in the program execution, and augmenting (e.g., “patching”) the logic includes adding tests to confirm that the invariants are satisfied in the new examples. In some examples, the logic invokes an automatic or semi-automatic error handling procedure if the test is not satisfied.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 7, 2010
    Publication date: June 7, 2012
    Applicants: BAE Systems Information Solutions, Inc., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Jeff Herbert Perkins, Stylianos Sidiroglou, Martin Conway Rinard, Eric Patrick Lahtinen, Paolo Mario Piselli, Basil C. Krikeles, Timothy Alan Anderson, Greg Timothy Sullivan