Related papers: Simulation-based Testing for Early Safety-Validati…

AI-controlled robotic systems pose a risk to human workers and the environment. Classical risk assessment methods cannot adequately describe such black box systems. Therefore, new methods for a dynamic risk assessment of such AI-controlled…

As the autonomy and capabilities of robotic systems increase, they are expected to play the role of teammates rather than tools and interact with human collaborators in a more realistic manner, creating a more human-like relationship. Given…

Embedding artificial intelligence into systems introduces significant challenges to modern engineering practices. Hazard analysis tools and processes have not yet been adequately adapted to the new paradigm. This paper describes initial…

The widescale deployment of Autonomous Vehicles (AV) appears to be imminent despite many safety challenges that are yet to be resolved. It is well-known that there are no universally agreed Verification and Validation (VV) methodologies…

In robotics, simulation has the potential to reduce design time and costs, and lead to a more robust engineered solution and a safer development process. However, the use of simulators is predicated on the availability of good models. This…

Safety is a critical requirement for the real-world deployment of robotic systems. Unfortunately, while current robot foundation models show promising generalization capabilities across a wide variety of tasks, they fail to address safety,…

The desire to use reinforcement learning in safety-critical settings has inspired a recent interest in formal methods for learning algorithms. Existing formal methods for learning and optimization primarily consider the problem of…

Autonomous cyber-physical systems (CPS) can improve safety and efficiency for safety-critical applications, but require rigorous testing before deployment. The complexity of these systems often precludes the use of formal verification and…

Machine learning has made remarkable advancements, but confidently utilising learning-enabled components in safety-critical domains still poses challenges. Among the challenges, it is known that a rigorous, yet practical, way of achieving…

As drones and autonomous cars become more widespread it is becoming increasingly important that robots can operate safely under realistic conditions. The noisy information fed into real systems means that robots must use estimates of the…

Soft robot manipulators have the potential for deployment in delicate environments to perform complex manipulation tasks. However, existing obstacle detection and avoidance methods do not consider limits on the forces that manipulators may…

This paper introduces the notion of danger awareness in the context of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), which decodes whether a human is aware of the existence of the robot, and illuminates whether the human is willing to engage in enforcing…

Robotic systems are multi-dimensional entities, combining both hardware and software, that are heavily dependent on, and influenced by, interactions with the real world. They can be variously categorised as embedded, cyberphysical,…

With the advent of AI technologies, humans and robots are increasingly teaming up to perform collaborative tasks. To enable smooth and effective collaboration, the topic of value alignment (operationalized herein as the degree of dynamic…

Autonomous robotic systems are complex, hybrid, and often safety-critical; this makes their formal specification and verification uniquely challenging. Though commonly used, testing and simulation alone are insufficient to ensure the…

Hybrid systems with both discrete and continuous dynamics are an important model for real-world cyber-physical systems. The key challenge is to ensure their correct functioning w.r.t. safety requirements. Promising techniques to ensure…

Safety is a fundamental requirement in any human-robot collaboration scenario. To ensure the safety of users for such scenarios, we propose a novel Virtual Barrier system facilitated by an augmented reality interface. Our system provides…

Collaborative robots, or cobots, are increasingly integrated into various industrial and service settings to work efficiently and safely alongside humans. However, for effective human-robot collaboration, robots must reason based on human…

Soft robots promise inherent safety via their material compliance for seamless interactions with humans or delicate environments. Yet, their development is challenging because it requires integrating materials, geometry, actuation, and…

The safety of mobile robots in dynamic environments is predicated on making sure that they do not collide with obstacles. In support of such safety arguments, we analyze and formally verify a series of increasingly powerful safety…