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Towards Rule-Based Dynamic Safety Monitoring for Mobile Robots

  • Conference paper
Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots (SIMPAR 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 8810))

Abstract

Safety is a key challenge in robotics, in particular for mobile robots operating in an open and unpredictable environment. To address the safety challenge, various software-based approaches have been proposed, but none of them provide a clearly specified and isolated safety layer. In this paper, we propose that safety-critical concerns regarding the robot software be explicitly declared separately from the main program, in terms of externally observable properties of the software. Concretely, we use a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) to declaratively specify a set of safety-related rules that the software must obey, as well as corresponding corrective actions that trigger when rules are violated. Our prototype DSL is integrated with ROS, is shown to be capable of specifying safety-related constraints, and is experimentally demonstrated to enforce safety behaviour in existing robot software. We believe our approach could be extended to other fields to similarly simplify safety certification.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Conpleks ApS, Struer, Denmark

    Sorin Adam & Morten Larsen

  2. University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

    Kjeld Jensen & Ulrik Pagh Schultz

Authors
  1. Sorin Adam
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  2. Morten Larsen
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  3. Kjeld Jensen
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  4. Ulrik Pagh Schultz
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Viale Marconi 5, 24044, Dalmine, Italy

    Davide Brugali

  2. Faculty EE-Math-CS, CTIT Institute, Robotics and Mechatronics Group, University of Twente, Room Carre 3437, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Jan F. Broenink

  3. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Stanford University, 94305-9010, Stanford, CA, USA

    Torsten Kroeger

  4. Faculty of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Science Centre - Mathphysic, Level 2, University of Auckland, Room 303-249, 38 Princess Street, 1010, Auckland, New Zealand

    Bruce A. MacDonald

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Adam, S., Larsen, M., Jensen, K., Schultz, U.P. (2014). Towards Rule-Based Dynamic Safety Monitoring for Mobile Robots. In: Brugali, D., Broenink, J.F., Kroeger, T., MacDonald, B.A. (eds) Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots. SIMPAR 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8810. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11900-7_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11900-7_18

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-11899-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-11900-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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