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Towards Temporal Verification of Emergent Behaviours in Swarm Robotic Systems

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Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 6856))

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Abstract

A robot swarm is a collection of simple robots designed to work together to carry out some task. Such swarms rely on: the simplicity of the individual robots; the fault tolerance inherent in having a large population of often identical robots; and the self-organised behaviour of the swarm as a whole. Although robot swarms are being deployed in increasingly sophisticated areas, designing individual control algorithms that can guarantee the required global behaviour is difficult. In this paper we apply and assess the use of formal verification techniques, in particular that of model checking, for analysing the emergent behaviours of robotic swarms. These techniques, based on the automated analysis of systems using temporal logics, allow us to analyse all possible behaviours and so identify potential problems with the robot swarm conforming to some required global behaviour. To show this approach we target a particular swarm control algorithm, and show how automated temporal analysis can help to refine and analyse such an algorithm.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Clare Dixon & Michael Fisher

  2. Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

    Alan Winfield

Authors
  1. Clare Dixon
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  2. Alan Winfield
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  3. Michael Fisher
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Mappin Street, S1 3JD, Sheffield, UK

    Roderich Groß

  2. Materials and Engineering Research Institute, Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus, Horward Street, S1 1WB, Sheffield, UK

    Lyuba Alboul  & Jacques Penders  & 

  3. Department of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), University of Bristol and the West of England, Bristol Business Park, BS16 1QD, Bistol, UK

    Chris Melhuish

  4. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, SW7 2BT, London, UK

    Mark Witkowski

  5. Department of Psychology, The University of Sheffield, Wstern Bank, S10 2TN, Sheffield, UK

    Tony J. Prescott

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Dixon, C., Winfield, A., Fisher, M. (2011). Towards Temporal Verification of Emergent Behaviours in Swarm Robotic Systems. In: Groß, R., Alboul, L., Melhuish, C., Witkowski, M., Prescott, T.J., Penders, J. (eds) Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems. TAROS 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6856. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23232-9_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23232-9_30

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-23231-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-23232-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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