Resilient computing on ROS using adaptive fault tolerance

Abstract

Computer‐based systems are now expected to evolve during their service life to cope with changes of various nature, ranging from evolution of user needs, eg, additional features requested by users, to system configuration changes, eg, modifications in available hardware resources. When considering resilient embedded systems that must comply with stringent dependability requirements, the challenge is even greater, as evolution must not impair dependability attributes. Maintaining dependability properties when facing changes is, indeed, the exact definition of resilient computing. In this paper, we consider the evolution of systems with respect to their dependability mechanisms and show how such mechanisms can evolve with the system evolution, in the case of ROS, the robot operating system. We provide a synthesis of the concepts required for resilient computing using a component‐based approach. We particularly emphasize the process and the techniques needed to implement an adaptation layer for fault tolerance mechanisms. In the light of this analysis, we address the implementation of adaptive fault tolerance on ROS in 2 steps: Firstly, we provide an architecture to implement fault tolerance mechanisms in ROS, and secondly, we describe the actual adaptation of fault tolerance mechanisms in ROS. Beyond the implementation details given in the paper, we draw the lessons learned from this work and discuss the limits of this run‐time support to implement adaptive fault tolerance features in embedded systems.

Component Interface Standardization in Robotic Systems

“…They are strongly related to how an interface can be described and used in our interface formulation in the next section. These interfaces can be used to achieve dynamic component exchange during runtime as part of the pursuit of fault-tolerant systems and systems that can adapt to changing conditions [7].…”

A hierarchical fault tolerant architecture for an autonomous robot

“…This means that the heath status of the robot and surroundings conditions should be monitored and FTM updated accordingly. Adaptation of FTM is out of the scope of this paper, but this issue has already been investigated in companion work, such as in [28]. The objective here is not to quantify error detection and recovery coverage, but to analyse the behaviour of the system in the presence of unwanted events, namely faults.…”

ROS Rescue : Fault Tolerance System for Robot Operating System

“…There have been previous attempts towards fault tolerance in ROS [7] [6]. Both these cases propose a transparent approach where there is a separation between functional code and the fault tolerance mechanism.…”

“…Lauer et al [7], propose an adaptive fault-tolerance technique related to a component based approach. Their design to fault-tolerance uses primary-backup replication and the introduction of, before-proceed-after, interceptor nodes between the clients (ROS nodes) and the master.…”