The topics covered in this book range from modeling and programming languages and environments, via approaches for design and verification, to issues of ethics and regulation. In terms of techniques, there are results on model-based engineering, product lines, mission specification, component-based development, simulation, testing, and proof. Applications range from manufacturing to service robots, to autonomous vehicles, and even robots than evolve in the real world. A final chapter summarizes issues on ethics and regulation based on discussions from a panel of experts. The origin of this book is a two-day event, entitled RoboSoft, that took place in November 2019, in London. Organized with the generous support of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the University of York, UK, RoboSoft brought together more than 100 scientists, engineers and practitioners from all over the world, representing 70 international institutions. The intended readership includes researchers and practitioners with all levels of experience interested in working in the area of robotics, and software engineering more generally. The chapters are all self-contained, include explanations of the core concepts, and finish with a discussion of directions for further work. Chapters 'Towards Autonomous Robot Evolution', 'Composition, Separation of Roles and Model-Driven Approaches as Enabler of a Robotics Software Ecosystem' and 'Verifiable Autonomy and Responsible Robotics' are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
This volume constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Verified Software: Theories, Tools and Experiments, VSTTE 2016, held in July 2016 in Toronto, ON, Canada. The 8 full papers together with 4 short papers and 5 invited papers presented were carefully revised and selected 21 submissions. The goal of the VSTTE conference is to advance thestate of the art through the interaction of theory development, tool evolution, and experimental validation.
How can we provide guarantees of behaviours for autonomous systems such as driverless cars? This tutorial text, for professionals, researchers and graduate students, explains how autonomous systems, from intelligent robots to driverless cars, can be programmed in ways that make them amenable to formal verification. The authors review specific definitions, applications and the unique future potential of autonomous systems, along with their impact on safer decisions and ethical behaviour. Topics discussed include the use of rational cognitive agent programming from the Beliefs-Desires-Intentions paradigm to control autonomous systems and the role model-checking in verifying the properties of this decision-making component. Several case studies concerning both the verification of autonomous systems and extensions to the framework beyond the model-checking of agent decision-makers are included, along with complete tutorials for the use of the freely-available verifiable cognitive agent toolkit Gwendolen, written in Java.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Integrated Formal Methods, IFM 2022, held in Lugano, Switzerland, in June 2022. The 14 full papers and 2 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 46 submissions. The papers are categorized into the following topical sub-headings: Invited Papers; Cooperative and Relational Verification; B Method; Time; Probability; learning and Synthesis; Security; Stats Analysis and Testing; PhD Symposium Presentations.
Early rules-based artificial intelligence demonstrated intriguing decision-making capabilities but lacked perception and didn't learn. AI today, primed with machine learning perception and deep reinforcement learning capabilities, can perform superhuman decision-making for specific tasks. This book shows you how to combine the practicality of early AI with deep learning capabilities and industrial control technologies to make robust decisions in the real world. Using concrete examples, minimal theory, and a proven architectural framework, author Kence Anderson demonstrates how to teach autonomous AI explicit skills and strategies. You'll learn when and how to use and combine various AI architecture design patterns, as well as how to design advanced AI without needing to manipulate neural networks or machine learning algorithms. Students, process operators, data scientists, machine learning algorithm experts, and engineers who own and manage industrial processes can use the methodology in this book to design autonomous AI. This book examines: Differences between and limitations of automated, autonomous, and human decision-making Unique advantages of autonomous AI for real-time decision-making, with use cases How to design an autonomous AI from modular components and document your designs
An introduction to the science and practice of autonomous robots that reviews over 300 current systems and examines the underlying technology. Autonomous robots are intelligent machines capable of performing tasks in the world by themselves, without explicit human control. Examples range from autonomous helicopters to Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner. In this book, George Bekey offers an introduction to the science and practice of autonomous robots that can be used both in the classroom and as a reference for industry professionals. He surveys the hardware implementations of more than 300 current systems, reviews some of their application areas, and examines the underlying technology, including control, architectures, learning, manipulation, grasping, navigation, and mapping. Living systems can be considered the prototypes of autonomous systems, and Bekey explores the biological inspiration that forms the basis of many recent developments in robotics. He also discusses robot control issues and the design of control architectures. After an overview of the field that introduces some of its fundamental concepts, the book presents background material on hardware, control (from both biological and engineering perspectives), software architecture, and robot intelligence. It then examines a broad range of implementations and applications, including locomotion (wheeled, legged, flying, swimming, and crawling robots), manipulation (both arms and hands), localization, navigation, and mapping. The many case studies and specific applications include robots built for research, industry, and the military, among them underwater robotic vehicles, walking machines with four, six, and eight legs, and the famous humanoid robots Cog, Kismet, ASIMO, and QRIO. The book concludes with reflections on the future of robotics—the potential benefits as well as the possible dangers that may arise from large numbers of increasingly intelligent and autonomous robots.
Using our moral and technical imaginations to create responsible innovations: theory, method, and applications for value sensitive design. Implantable medical devices and human dignity. Private and secure access to information. Engineering projects that transform the Earth. Multigenerational information systems for international justice. How should designers, engineers, architects, policy makers, and others design such technology? Who should be involved and what values are implicated? In Value Sensitive Design, Batya Friedman and David Hendry describe how both moral and technical imagination can be brought to bear on the design of technology. With value sensitive design, under development for more than two decades, Friedman and Hendry bring together theory, methods, and applications for a design process that engages human values at every stage. After presenting the theoretical foundations of value sensitive design, which lead to a deep rethinking of technical design, Friedman and Hendry explain seventeen methods, including stakeholder analysis, value scenarios, and multilifespan timelines. Following this, experts from ten application domains report on value sensitive design practice. Finally, Friedman and Hendry explore such open questions as the need for deeper investigation of indirect stakeholders and further method development. This definitive account of the state of the art in value sensitive design is an essential resource for designers and researchers working in academia and industry, students in design and computer science, and anyone working at the intersection of technology and society.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Reachability Problems, RP 2019, held in Brussels, Belgium, in September 2019. The 14 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 26 submissions. The papers cover topics such as reachability for infinite state systems; rewriting systems; reachability analysis in counter/timed/cellular/communicating automata; Petri nets; computational aspects of semigroups, groups, and rings; reachability in dynamical and hybrid systems; frontiers between decidable and undecidable reachability problems; complexity and decidability aspects; predictability in iterative maps; and new computational paradigms.
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, EUMAS 2014, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in December 2014. The 21 full papers and 8 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 79 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: agent-based models, trust and reputation; coordination, coalitions and teamwork; logic and formal approaches; theories in practice and real-world problems; decision making, conflicts and agreements.