Towards Integrating Formal Verification of Autonomous Robots with Battery Prognostics and Health Management

Zhao, Xingyu; Osborne, Matthew; Lantair, Jennifer; Robu, Valentin; Flynn, David; Huang, Xiaowei; Fisher, Michael; Papacchini, Fabio; Ferrando, Angelo

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-30446-1_6

Cited by 12 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 43 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…One of the reasons for this growing interest in MR teams is the limitation in capabilities of available single robots. Since no single robot can perform all conceivable tasks due to design [56,57], size [58] and power consumption limitations [59,60], it may be useful to combine the functionalities of several robots to accomplish a goal. The main reason for this is the need to accomplish tasks within a given timeframe where a diverse robotic fleet completing a collection of inspection tasks is more efficient and effective.…”

Section: Related Work: Mr Fleetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons learned: Symbiotic autonomous robot ecosystem for nuclear environments

Mitchell,

Emor Baniqued,

Zahid

et al. 2023

IET Cyber-Syst and Robotics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nuclear facilities have a regulatory requirement to measure radiation levels within Post Operational Clean Out (POCO) around nuclear facilities each year, resulting in a trend towards robotic deployments to gain an improved understanding during nuclear decommissioning phases. The UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority supports the view that human‐in‐the‐loop (HITL) robotic deployments are a solution to improve procedures and reduce risks within radiation characterisation of nuclear sites. The authors present a novel implementation of a Cyber‐Physical System (CPS) deployed in an analogue nuclear environment, comprised of a multi‐robot (MR) team coordinated by a HITL operator through a digital twin interface. The development of the CPS created efficient partnerships across systems including robots, digital systems and human. This was presented as a multi‐staged mission within an inspection scenario for the heterogeneous Symbiotic Multi‐Robot Fleet (SMuRF). Symbiotic interactions were achieved across the SMuRF where robots utilised automated collaborative governance to work together, where a single robot would face challenges in full characterisation of radiation. Key contributions include the demonstration of symbiotic autonomy and query‐based learning of an autonomous mission supporting scalable autonomy and autonomy as a service. The coordination of the CPS was a success and displayed further challenges and improvements related to future MR fleets.

show abstract

Section: Related Work: Mr Fleetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons learned: Symbiotic autonomous robot ecosystem for nuclear environments

Mitchell,

Emor Baniqued,

Zahid

et al. 2023

IET Cyber-Syst and Robotics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The particular issues concern mixing battery-awareness and (formal) verification with other activities, such as planning, scheduling [134], prognostics and health management [135]. In terms of verification, the representation of energy use in combination with a wide variety of other dimensions, still remains problematic.…”

Section: Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Overview of Verification and Validation Challenges for Inspection Robots

et al. 2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The advent of sophisticated robotics and AI technology makes sending humans into hazardous and distant environments to carry out inspections increasingly avoidable. Being able to send a robot, rather than a human, into a nuclear facility or deep space is very appealing. However, building these robotic systems is just the start and we still need to carry out a range of verification and validation tasks to ensure that the systems to be deployed are as safe and reliable as possible. Based on our experience across three research and innovation hubs within the UK’s “Robots for a Safer World” programme, we present an overview of the relevant techniques and challenges in this area. As the hubs are active across nuclear, offshore, and space environments, this gives a breadth of issues common to many inspection robots.

show abstract

“…The use of drones has significant potential to increase efficiency, reduce O&M costs, improve operational safety as well as minimize production downtimes in the wind energy sector. However, despite all these potential benefits, the drone-based inspection technology for offshore wind turbines is still at an early stage of development and further studies are necessary to identify key technological gaps, opportunities, and future requirements of the technology in terms of hardware, software, and data [14,15]. Reliability, which is defined as the probability of a system functioning without failure for a given period of time in a designed environment, is a key performance indicator for drone systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unmanned Aerial Drones for Inspection of Offshore Wind Turbines: A Mission-Critical Failure Analysis

et al. 2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

With increasing global investment in offshore wind energy and rapid deployment of wind power technologies in deep water hazardous environments, the in-service inspection of wind turbines and their related infrastructure plays an important role in the safe and efficient operation of wind farm fleets. The use of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and remotely piloted aircraft (RPA)—commonly known as “drones”—for remote inspection of wind energy infrastructure has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Drones have significant potential to reduce not only the number of times that personnel will need to travel to and climb up the wind turbines, but also the amount of heavy lifting equipment required to carry out the dangerous inspection works. Drones can also shorten the duration of downtime needed to detect defects and collect diagnostic information from the entire wind farm. Despite all these potential benefits, the drone-based inspection technology in the offshore wind industry is still at an early stage of development and its reliability has yet to be proven. Any unforeseen failure of the drone system during its mission may cause an interruption in inspection operations, and thereby, significant reduction in the electricity generated by wind turbines. In this paper, we propose a semiquantitative reliability analysis framework to identify and evaluate the criticality of mission failures—at both system and component levels—in inspection drones, with the goal of lowering the operation and maintenance (O&M) costs as well as improving personnel safety in offshore wind farms. Our framework is built based upon two well-established failure analysis methodologies, namely, fault tree analysis (FTA) and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA). It is then tested and verified on a drone prototype, which was developed in the laboratory for taking aerial photography and video of both onshore and offshore wind turbines. The most significant failure modes and underlying root causes within the drone system are identified, and the effects of the failures on the system’s operation are analysed. Finally, some innovative solutions are proposed on how to minimize the risks associated with mission failures in inspection drones.

show abstract

Towards Integrating Formal Verification of Autonomous Robots with Battery Prognostics and Health Management

Cited by 12 publications

References 43 publications

Lessons learned: Symbiotic autonomous robot ecosystem for nuclear environments

Lessons learned: Symbiotic autonomous robot ecosystem for nuclear environments

An Overview of Verification and Validation Challenges for Inspection Robots

Unmanned Aerial Drones for Inspection of Offshore Wind Turbines: A Mission-Critical Failure Analysis

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About