Autonomous Vehicles
Particular types of vehicles that we are interested in programming and
formally verifying are:
- autonomous satellites;
- multiple satellites, for example formation flying satellites;
- unmanned air vehicles and, again, swarms of these;
- robots, though see here.
Some examples of some of these activities are given below.
Satellites: Through
the EPSRC
funded Engineering Autonomous
Space Software research project, we are collaborating with
the School of
Engineering at Univ. Southampton on the use of hybrid
agent-based control architectures in space exploration,
particularly through cooperating satellites:
- Dennis, L. A., Fisher, M., Lincoln, N., Lisitsa, A., and Veres,
S. M.
Reducing Code Complexity in
Hybrid Control Systems. In
Proc. 10th International Symposium on
Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space
(i-Sairas). 2010.
- Dennis, L. A., Fisher, M., Lisitsa, A., Lincoln, N., and Veres, S. M.
Satellite Control Using Rational
Agent
Programming. IEEE
Intelligent Systems 25(3):92-97, May/June, 2010.
- Lincoln, N., Veres, S. M., Dennis, L. A., Fisher, M., and Lisitsa, A.
An Agent Based Framework for Adaptive Control and
Decision Making of Autonomous Vehicles. In Proc. IFAC Workshop
on Adaptation and Learning in Control and Signal Processing
(ALCOSP), 2010.
UAVs:
In collaboration with
the Virtual
Engineering Centre at Daresbury, we
have been looking at the control and reliability of unmanned air
vehicles. Specifically, we are exploring how our formal
verificaiton techniques can be used as part of the certification
process for autonomous UAVs:
- Webster, M., Fisher, M., Cameron, N., and Jump, M.
Model Checking and the Certification of
Autonomous Unmanned Aircraft Systems. In
Proc. 30th International
Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security
(SAFECOMP). Naples, Italy, September, 2011.
- Cameron, N., Webster, M., Jump, M., and Fisher, M.
Certification of Civil UAS: A Virtual
Engineering Approach. In
Proc. American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Modelling and Simulation
Technologies Conference (AIAA-MST). Portland, USA,
August, 2011.
Events: In 2005, Michael
Fisher was co-Chair of
the Agents
in Space Symposium (reported both locally
and internationally) and has been
involved in co-chairing,
with Manuela
Bujorianu,
the Formal Methods for
Aerospace series of workshops: