{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp06_four_proposal_generalization60_20260803","cell_id":"representation_independent_interface_contract__nanotechnology","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_id":"scanning_probe_manipulation_session_contract","proposal_index":2,"version":0,"title":"Behavioral Substitution Contract for Scanning-Probe Motion Controllers","problem":"Scanning-probe automation can depend on controller-specific voltage channels, command queues, approach flags, completion signals, and fault-reset behavior. Two motion-controller or feedback implementations may expose similarly named commands while differing on when movement begins, what counts as completion, whether a failed command changes state, and which operations remain possible after a sensor or travel-limit fault. An automation client that reads those internals or assumes their accidental behavior cannot safely use a replacement controller, and the laboratory lacks a representation-independent rule for deciding whether one controller preserves the required manipulation behavior.","actors":["Scanning-probe microscope operators","Scientists authoring automated imaging or manipulation procedures","Instrument-control software engineers","Motion-controller and feedback-controller implementers","Tip, sample, and stage custodians","Laboratory instrument-safety and quality authorities"],"observable_state":"When the same public command sequence is submitted to two purportedly interchangeable controllers, they can report different lifecycle states, acknowledge completion at different semantic points, accept commands in different fault conditions, or leave the probe differently engaged after cancellation or failure. A client may also stop functioning when raw voltage channels, queue identifiers, vendor status bits, or polling order change even though the nominal high-level commands remain available.","consequence":"Controller replacement or optimization can change physical-motion sequencing and recovery behavior without an explicit contract change. This can invalidate automation, obscure responsibility for failed commands, or expose a probe, sample, or stage to motion outside the client's assumed state while preventing a defensible substitutability decision.","affected_objective":"Maintain predictable, auditable probe-manipulation state transitions and bounded physical side effects while allowing controller hardware, feedback algorithms, command scheduling, and internal telemetry representations to change independently.","intervention":"Create an opaque ProbeManipulationSession defined by its observable state machine rather than by voltages, actuator layout, vendor opcodes, or queue implementation. Its states are DISARMED, READY_RETRACTED, APPROACHING, ENGAGED, SCANNING, RETRACTING, and FAULT. Public operations include arm with an authorized safety envelope, approach, request bounded lateral motion, start or pause a scan, retract, cancel, query status, acknowledge a recoverable fault, and emergency stop. Each operation specifies admissible source states, accepted/in-progress/completed/failed outcomes, postconditions, typed errors, and permitted physical side effects. Invariants prohibit scan or lateral-motion completion outside the armed envelope, prohibit ordinary motion after entry into FAULT, distinguish command acceptance from sensor-confirmed completion, and require retraction or a declared inability-to-retract outcome rather than an ambiguous success report. The session handle exposes normalized position-with-uncertainty, lifecycle state, and contract-defined diagnostics while hiding actuator commands, raw feedback buffers, scheduling, caches, and controller-specific status words. One black-box conformance suite, including generated command sequences and injected failures, gates every implementation of the same contract version before it may be considered behaviorally substitutable.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Abstract behavioral surface","domain_realization":"ProbeManipulationSession exposes stateful manipulation operations and normalized outcomes instead of raw piezo voltages, motor steps, vendor opcodes, or feedback-loop fields."},{"archetype_element":"Abstract state model","domain_realization":"The component is modeled as an opaque session moving among DISARMED, READY_RETRACTED, APPROACHING, ENGAGED, SCANNING, RETRACTING, and FAULT under explicitly allowed operations."},{"archetype_element":"Representation invariant","domain_realization":"Every valid concrete controller state maps to exactly one declared session state, has a current safety envelope and calibration identity when armed, never reports sensor-confirmed completion without the required public evidence, and admits ordinary motion only from contract-authorized states."},{"archetype_element":"Abstraction function","domain_realization":"Vendor status bits, command queues, actuator coordinates, feedback buffers, and internal controller modes map to the public lifecycle state, normalized position-with-uncertainty, command outcome, and typed diagnostic set."},{"archetype_element":"Behavioral laws and sequences","domain_realization":"Retract is idempotent once confirmed retracted; emergency stop cannot transition into an ordinary motion state; a rejected command leaves abstract state unchanged; FAULT is closed to ordinary motion until an authorized recovery transition; and querying status has no physical side effect."},{"archetype_element":"Error semantics","domain_realization":"Envelope violations, invalid source states, stale calibration, sensor loss, travel-limit events, cancellation, and inability to confirm completion have distinct typed outcomes rather than controller-specific codes or ambiguous success values."},{"archetype_element":"Side-effect limits","domain_realization":"Each accepted operation names the physical motion it may initiate, its envelope, and its cancellation behavior; status queries, validation failures, and rejected commands may not initiate motion."},{"archetype_element":"Hidden representation","domain_realization":"Actuator topology, voltage conversion, feedback gains, scheduling, polling frequency, internal queues, raw status words, buffers, and caches remain unreachable through the session handle."},{"archetype_element":"Conformance oracle","domain_realization":"A parameterized black-box suite exercises valid and invalid state transitions, failures, cancellations, status observations, envelope enforcement, and invariant preservation without inspecting controller internals."},{"archetype_element":"Substitutability rule","domain_realization":"A controller qualifies as a behavioral substitute only for the contract version and capability profile whose full conformance suite it passes; separate physical qualification remains mandatory and cannot be inferred from interface conformance."},{"archetype_element":"Leakage and version governance","domain_realization":"Reviews examine timing, diagnostic text, command identifiers, telemetry ordering, and opaque tokens for accidental controller clues, while changes to states, completion semantics, errors, or side effects receive an explicit compatibility classification."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"abstract_data_type_specification","role":"Defines the session's abstract states and operations, the invariant over valid concrete controller states, and the mapping from controller internals to public manipulation meaning.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the invariant and abstraction mapping, matching method names would not establish that two controllers represent the same lifecycle state or command outcome."},{"mechanism_slug":"design_by_contract_clause","role":"Assigns caller obligations, controller postconditions, violation outcomes, and physical side-effect limits to every stateful operation.","counterfactual_removal":"Implementations could disagree on invalid-state calls, cancellation, completion, or fault handling while still satisfying the same signatures."},{"mechanism_slug":"opaque_type_or_module_boundary","role":"Restricts clients to a session handle and sanctioned operations, blocking access to raw actuation channels, queues, status bits, and feedback buffers.","counterfactual_removal":"Automation could continue depending directly on controller representation, defeating substitution even if the behavioral surface were documented."},{"mechanism_slug":"interface_definition_language","role":"Encodes operations, lifecycle outcomes, typed errors, capability profiles, and version identifiers in a machine-readable boundary from which controller and client bindings can be generated.","counterfactual_removal":"Handwritten bindings could reintroduce vendor structures or disagree on the shape of commands and outcomes, although semantic tests would still be needed."},{"mechanism_slug":"black_box_contract_test_suite","role":"Provides the shared acceptance gate for controller implementations using only public calls and public observations.","counterfactual_removal":"There would be no repeatable representation-neutral basis for accepting a controller as a substitute."},{"mechanism_slug":"property_based_conformance_test","role":"Generates command sequences, cancellations, faults, and envelope boundaries to test that state-transition laws and invariants survive paths not covered by scripted examples.","counterfactual_removal":"Sequence-dependent violations could remain outside a small set of manually selected workflows."},{"mechanism_slug":"mock_fake_or_stub_implementation","role":"Supplies independent controller simulators that inject delayed completion, sensor loss, travel limits, stuck approach, and failed retraction without moving physical equipment.","counterfactual_removal":"The first evidence step could not safely and deterministically exercise rare or hazardous fault paths before hardware involvement."},{"mechanism_slug":"representation_leakage_probe","role":"Checks whether timing, diagnostic wording, command identifiers, telemetry order, or encoded tokens reveal controller-specific representation that clients could adopt.","counterfactual_removal":"An opaque session could still leak stable vendor details through observable behavior and form an unofficial interface."},{"mechanism_slug":"semantic_versioning_and_deprecation_gate","role":"Makes changes to lifecycle states, completion meaning, errors, capabilities, and side effects visible as compatibility decisions with staged removal of old behavior.","counterfactual_removal":"A controller update could silently redefine a manipulation promise while continuing to advertise the same interface version."}],"causal_chain":["Automation clients consume controller-specific actuation, queue, status, or timing details because the shared surface does not fully define state transitions and outcomes.","Those observable details become implicit requirements of imaging and manipulation procedures.","A controller, scheduler, or feedback implementation change then alters client behavior or physical-motion sequencing despite nominally unchanged commands.","The intervention defines manipulation as an opaque stateful component with explicit operations, invariants, errors, completion semantics, and side-effect limits.","The opaque boundary prevents direct reliance on controller representation, while generated bindings constrain the syntactic crossing.","Independent simulators and a shared black-box oracle test valid sequences, invalid transitions, cancellations, and injected faults against the same behavioral laws.","Leakage review identifies unpromised controller clues, and version governance makes changed promises explicit.","A replacement can be classified as behaviorally conforming or nonconforming without requiring clients to understand its actuator or feedback representation, while physical qualification remains a separate authority-controlled decision."],"baseline":"The bounded comparison baseline is a controller-specific automation layer in which scripts issue vendor commands, poll raw statuses, infer completion from implementation-dependent signals, and use selected hardware demonstrations or maintainer judgment to approve changes. It has no single black-box state-transition oracle applicable to independently implemented controllers.","nearest_rivals":["Standardize a common list of controller commands. Shared command names address syntax but do not define lifecycle transitions, completion, fault recovery, or physical side-effect limits.","Maintain a separate adapter for each controller and automation client. Adapters translate vendor calls but can preserve incompatible semantics and create pairwise maintenance obligations.","Freeze the existing controller and feedback implementation. This avoids an immediate substitution decision but retains representation-dependent automation and prevents independent replacement.","Qualify an entire microscope configuration as one indivisible system. Whole-system qualification may remain necessary for physical use, but it does not isolate whether the controller component preserves a reusable behavioral contract.","Expose all raw telemetry so each client can make its own safety decisions. This increases representation coupling and distributes inconsistent interpretations of state and completion among clients."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The proposal makes a structural and falsifiable claim rather than a novelty or effect claim: controller substitution becomes separately governable when probe manipulation is defined as an opaque state machine with contract-level physical side effects and one reusable behavioral oracle, rather than as shared command syntax, pairwise translation, or access to raw telemetry.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The instrument-control software steward may draft and test the interface in a disconnected simulation environment. Only the laboratory's established instrument owner and safety or quality authority may approve connection to physical motion hardware, controller replacement, or use with a tip or sample.","authorized_first_step":"Specify the contract and run it against two independent software simulators with injected failures; all hardware transports and actuation outputs must remain disabled.","excluded_actions":["Connecting the prototype to a microscope, nanopositioner, actuator, high-voltage driver, or feedback controller","Approaching or moving a physical probe, stage, sample, or calibration artifact","Replacing or modifying a validated instrument controller","Changing existing travel, force, current, speed, interlock, or emergency-stop limits","Treating software conformance as physical qualification, calibration evidence, or authorization for unattended operation","Weakening a safety invariant to accommodate a simulator or candidate implementation"],"halt_rollback":"Stop if any prototype command can reach a hardware transport, if the abstraction cannot express an existing safety-critical distinction, if an implementation requires an undeclared motion side effect, or if tests conflate acceptance with sensor-confirmed completion. Roll back by disabling the prototype bindings and simulators, preserving the incumbent control path unchanged, and escalating the unresolved distinction to the instrument authority."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"A dependency inventory and paired implementation review show that automation already uses only an opaque, versioned state-machine contract with explicit completion, fault, cancellation, and side-effect semantics, and that independent controllers are already judged by one representation-neutral conformance suite. That would remove the proposed structural gap.","problem_falsifier":"Within the bounded automation examples, no client reads controller-specific state or timing, and replacing the simulated internal actuator, scheduler, or feedback representation produces no unexplained difference in public states, outcomes, or command admissibility; failures are instead attributable solely to separately governed physical calibration or procedure design.","intervention_falsifier":"Two independently built simulators cannot implement a useful shared state model without controller-specific escape clauses, or both pass the suite while a held-out command sequence violates a stated lifecycle or side-effect law. Either outcome shows that the contract or oracle is inadequate for substitution.","risks":["A simplified state model could conceal modality-specific distinctions needed for safe operation.","Passing simulated conformance could be mistaken for evidence that emergency stopping, retraction, positioning, or sensing works on physical hardware.","Overly precise timing requirements could freeze scheduler implementation, while vague timing could leave completion unusable.","Generated sequences may omit a hazardous interaction among cancellation, delayed acknowledgments, sensor loss, and fault recovery.","Normalized telemetry may erase uncertainty or calibration provenance that a client must observe.","Mocks can drift from real controllers and manufacture confidence unless later evidence is independently authorized and scoped.","An opaque boundary could impede diagnosis if sanctioned, read-only diagnostics are too weak, or defeat itself if they expose raw representation."]},"next_evidence_step":"Before observing simulator behavior, write a finite transition table, operation clauses, typed error catalog, and side-effect matrix for the draft ProbeManipulationSession. Implement two independent software-only controllers with different internal scheduling and actuator models, plus a client harness that knows only the public interface. Over a bounded suite, exercise ordinary approach-scan-retract sequences, every invalid source-state call, repeated retraction, cancellation before and after acceptance, stale calibration, envelope violation, delayed completion, sensor loss, travel-limit fault, and inability to confirm retraction. Add generated command sequences and a leakage audit of identifiers, diagnostic text, ordering, and timing. Classify each divergence as an implementation defect, test defect, or under-specified contract clause. End the step without hardware connectivity; inability to resolve divergences without vendor-specific public fields is evidence against proceeding.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Proposal 1 addressed the abstract meaning of static nanoscale pattern geometry so polygon, voxel, and implicit-field data backends could substitute without changing downstream design semantics. This proposal addresses a materially different problem: stateful control of physical scanning-probe motion, including command admissibility, completion, cancellation, faults, and bounded side effects. Its intervention is an opaque manipulation-session state machine rather than an immutable material-region value, and its causal path runs from controller-specific automation dependencies through divergent motion and recovery behavior to unsafe or unauditable controller substitution. It is independently adoptable in an instrument-control stack without adopting or modifying the NanoPatternRegion contract from proposal 1.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Second complete proposal","Materially different nanotechnology problem","Distinct stateful physical-control intervention","Representation-independent mechanism fidelity","Authority-bounded first evidence","Explicit contrast with proposal 1"],"conceptual_changes":["Initial version defines scanning-probe manipulation as an opaque behavioral state machine with explicit physical side-effect semantics."],"operational_changes":["Initial evidence is restricted to two independent software simulators with all hardware transports disabled."],"evidence_changes":["Prior art remains unsearched, and the proposal introduces no external evidence or claimed effect size."],"claim_changes":["The claim is limited to a falsifiable structural basis for behavioral substitution and expressly excludes physical qualification."]}}