Related papers: Establishing Reliable Robot Behavior using Capabil…
We describe a framework for changing-contact robot manipulation tasks that require the robot to make and break contacts with objects and surfaces. The discontinuous interaction dynamics of such tasks make it difficult to construct and use a…
Many existing tools in nonlinear control theory for establishing stability or safety of a dynamical system can be distilled to the construction of a certificate function that guarantees a desired property. However, algorithms for…
This position paper looks briefly at the way we attempt to program robotic AI systems. Many AI systems are based on the idea of trying to improve the performance of one individual system to beyond so-called human baselines. However, these…
Robot behavior is often validated through simulation-based testing, yet the replicability of such campaigns depends critically on transparent documentation of how tests are configured, executed, and post-processed. We argue that data…
In human-robot collaboration, the objectives of the human are often unknown to the robot. Moreover, even assuming a known objective, the human behavior is also uncertain. In order to plan a robust robot behavior, a key preliminary question…
Background: Due to their diversity, complexity, and above all importance, safety-critical and dependable systems must be developed with special diligence. Criticality increases as these systems likely contain artificial intelligence (AI)…
Robotic systems are widely used to interact with humans or to perform critical tasks. As a result, it is imperative to provide guarantees about their behavior. Due to the modularity and complexity of robotic systems, their design and…
Mass customization and shorter manufacturing cycles are becoming more important among small and medium-sized companies. However, classical industrial robots struggle to cope with product variation and dynamic environments. In this paper, we…
As research and industry moves towards large-scale models capable of numerous downstream tasks, the complexity of understanding multi-modal datasets that give nuance to models rapidly increases. A clear and thorough understanding of a…
Verifying the correct behavior of robots in contact tasks is challenging due to model uncertainties associated with contacts. Standard methods for testing often fall short since all (uncountable many) solutions cannot be obtained. Instead,…
Robots today often miss a key ingredient of truly intelligent behavior: the ability to reflect on their own cognitive processes and decisions. In humans, this self-monitoring or metacognition is crucial for learning, decision making and…
With the increasing complexity of modern industrial automatic and robotic systems, an increasing burden is put on the operators, who are requested to supervise and interact with such complex systems, typically under challenging and…
Autonomous robots deployed in shared human environments, such as agricultural settings, require rigorous safety assurance to meet both functional reliability and regulatory compliance. These systems must operate in dynamic, unstructured…
For a general standardized testing algorithm designed to evaluate a specific aspect of a robot's performance, several key expectations are commonly imposed. Beyond accuracy (i.e., closeness to a typically unknown ground-truth reference) and…
In reaction to growing concerns about the potential harms of artificial intelligence (AI), societies have begun to demand more transparency about how AI models and systems are created and used. To address these concerns, several efforts…
Purpose of Review: To effectively synthesise and analyse multi-robot behaviour, we require formal task-level models which accurately capture multi-robot execution. In this paper, we review modelling formalisms for multi-robot systems under…
Learning has propelled the cutting edge of performance in robotic control to new heights, allowing robots to operate with high performance in conditions that were previously unimaginable. The majority of the work, however, assumes that the…
A key aspect of a robot's knowledge base is self-awareness about what it is capable of doing. It allows to define which tasks it can be assigned to and which it cannot. We will refer to this knowledge as the Capability concept. As…
Robot failures in human-centered environments are inevitable. Therefore, the ability of robots to explain such failures is paramount for interacting with humans to increase trust and transparency. To achieve this skill, the main challenges…
Structural causal models describe how the components of a robotic system interact. They provide both structural and functional information about the relationships that are present in the system. The structural information outlines the…