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International Symposium on Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods

ISoLA 2020: Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation: Applications pp 326–347Cite as

Verifying Safety Properties of Robotic Plans Operating in Real-World Environments via Logic-Based Environment Modeling

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 12478))

Abstract

These days, robotic agents are finding their way into the personal environment of many people. With robotic vacuum cleaners commercially available already, comprehensive cognition-enabled agents assisting around the house autonomously are a highly relevant research topic. To execute these kinds of tasks in constantly changing environments, complex goal-driven control programs, so-called plans, are required. They incorporate perception, manipulation, and navigation capabilities among others. As with all technological innovation, consequently, safety and correctness concerns arise.

In this paper, we present a methodology for the verification of safety properties of robotic plans in household environments by a combination of environment reasoning using Discrete Event Calculus (DEC) and Symbolic Execution for effectively handling symbolic input variables (e. g. object positions). We demonstrate the applicability of our approach in an experimental evaluation by verifying safety properties of robotic plans controlling a two-armed, human-sized household robot packing and unpacking a shelf. Our experiments demonstrate our approach’s capability to verify several robotic plans in a realistic, logically formalized environment.

The research reported in this paper has been supported by the German Research Foundation DFG, as part of Collaborative Research Center (Sonderforschungsbereich) 1320 EASE – Everyday Activity Science and Engineering, University of Bremen (http://www.ease-crc.org/). The research was conducted in sub-project P04.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Gradual change allows to model properties that change over time after an initial action, e. g., an object falling and eventually hitting the ground after it has been dropped.

  2. 2.

    Note that this does not necessarily hold by design of the environment model. E. g. a grasping action will not result in the desired result if the robot is too far away from the object or the gripper is already occupied.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Group of Computer Architecture, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Tim Meywerk, Marcel Walter, Jan Kleinekathöfer & Rolf Drechsler

  2. Cyber Physical Systems, DFKI GmbH, Bremen, Germany

    Vladimir Herdt, Jan Kleinekathöfer, Daniel Große & Rolf Drechsler

  3. Chair of Complex Systems, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria

    Daniel Große

Authors
  1. Tim Meywerk
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  2. Marcel Walter
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  3. Vladimir Herdt
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  4. Jan Kleinekathöfer
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  5. Daniel Große
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  6. Rolf Drechsler
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tim Meywerk .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Limerick and Lero, Limerick, Ireland

    Tiziana Margaria

  2. TU Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Bernhard Steffen

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Meywerk, T., Walter, M., Herdt, V., Kleinekathöfer, J., Große, D., Drechsler, R. (2020). Verifying Safety Properties of Robotic Plans Operating in Real-World Environments via Logic-Based Environment Modeling. In: Margaria, T., Steffen, B. (eds) Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation: Applications. ISoLA 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12478. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61467-6_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61467-6_21

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-61466-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-61467-6

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