Architectures for Autonomous Robots

An updated version of this page will be available in March

 

Toward Robust and Dependable Architectures for Autonomous Robots

Recent developments, especially in service robots, put the robot in close vicinity and in direct physical interaction with humans. However, little has been achieved, until now, to address the issue of safety and dependability of robot software in such demanding context. It becomes critical to provide a formal approach which guarantees that safety rules and properties related to robot software components interactions are enforced. 
In the last years, we have teamed with VERIMAG and came up with an approach that combines their BIP (Behavior, Interaction, Priorities) component-based design approach with our modular architecture development approach. A result of this work is the synthesis of a BIP model of the complete functional layer of the DALA rover, which allows to: 

  • Generate a rover controller which is correct by construction and can be run by the BIP engine. 
  • Check if the model satisfies particular properties and constraints, by using a V&V (Verification and Validation) tools.

 

Relevant publications

S.BENSALEM, M.GALLIEN, F.INGRAND, I.KAHLOUL, T-H.NGUYEN Designing autonomous robots. Toward a More Dependable Software Architecture, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, Vol.16, N°1, March 2009 

A.BASU, M.GALLIEN, C.LESIRE-CABANIOLS, T-H.NGUYEN, S.BENSALEM, F.INGRAND, J.SIFAKIS, Incremental Component-Based Construction and Verification of a Robotic System ECAI 2008. The 18th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Patras (Greece), July 2008 
The LAAS Architecture and its tools 

S. JOYEUX, R.ALAMI, S.LACROIX, R.PHILIPPSEN, A plan manager for multi-robot systems. Rapport LAAS N°09297, International Journal of Robotics Research, Vol.28, N°2, pp.220-240, February 2009 

F.INGRAND, S.LACROIX, S.LEMAI, F.PY Decisional Autonomy of Planetary Rovers Journal of Field Robotics, Vol.24, N°7, pp.559-580, July 2007 

S.LEMAI, F.INGRAND, Interleaving temporal planning and execution in robotics domains. 19th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'04), San Jose (USA), July 2004, 6p. 

R.ALAMI, R.CHATILA, S.FLEURY, M.GHALLAB, F.INGRAND, An architecture for autonomy. International Journal of Robotic Research, Vol.17, N°4, pp.315-337, April 1998 

S.FLEURY, M.HERRB, R.CHATILA, GenoM: a tool for the specification and the implementation of operating modules in a distributed robot architecture. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'97), Grenoble (France), September 1997, Vol.2, pp.842-848 

F.INGRAND, R.CHATILA, R.ALAMI, F.ROBERT, PRS: a high level supervision and control language for autonomous mobile robots. 1996 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'96), Minneapolis (USA), April 1996, pp.43-49 
 

(not so) Recent theses

M. GALLIEN Planification et exécution pour la robotique autonome, Doctorat, Université Paul Sabatier, 27 mars 2008 

S. JOYEUX Un composant logiciel pour la gestion et l'exécution de plan en robotique: application aux systèmes multi-robots, Doctorat, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, 1 décembre 2007 

A. LAMPE Méthodologie d'évaluation du degré d'autonomie d'un robot mobile terrestre, Doctorat, Institut National Polytechnique, Toulouse, 14 décembre 2006 

F. PY Contrôle d'exécution dans une architecture hiérarchisée pour systèmes autonomes, Doctorat, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, 20 octobre 2005 

S. LEMAI IXTET-EXEC: planning, plan repair and execution control with time and resource management, Doctorat, Institut National Polytechnique, Toulouse, 21 Juin 2004, 209p.