Model Based Runtime Diagnosis for Autonomous Mobile Systems (MoRDAMS)

The aim of this project is to integrate runtime diagnosis of hardware and software of autonomous robot systems in a unified way. For this, a common model needs to be developed on which to apply model-based diagnosis techniques. Autonomous mobile robots represent a particularly well suited application for diagnosis tasks. Their autonomous nature implies that they need to reason about their state as there might not always be a supervising human operator. A robot should at all times aim to maintain functionality or try to retain as much system functionality as possible. Repair actions might lead to a fully functioning state after a fault has been diagnosed. Reconfiguration might retain functionality to a certain degree. In the worst case, the robot might reconfigure itself to switch to a fail-safe mode to avoid further damage or threats to nearby people. For example, diagnosis that the vision sensor is malfunctioning could lead to a reconfiguration where other sensors, e.g., a laser range scanner, are used. This might also require to use a different mode of operation, i.e., software reconfiguration. If, however, the video device driver causes problems while the actual video device is still fully functioning, a restart of the video device driver and all dependand services might be a sufficient repair action to restore normal behaviour. As can be seen from this example hardware and software are tightly coupled and need to be modeled together. In this project the feasibility of a unified diagnosis approach is to be evaluated. The modular robotic platform created at Graz Technical University will serve as a test-platform for case-studies on modelling hardware, software, interfaces between hardware and software and interfaces between the abstract control and diagnosis layers. These robots are used for office delivery tasks and robotic soccer, and will serve as target for a case-study. Diagnosis on these models is to be integrated with repair and reconfiguration.