92,919 research outputs found
SOTER: A Runtime Assurance Framework for Programming Safe Robotics Systems
The recent drive towards achieving greater autonomy and intelligence in
robotics has led to high levels of complexity. Autonomous robots increasingly
depend on third party off-the-shelf components and complex machine-learning
techniques. This trend makes it challenging to provide strong design-time
certification of correct operation.
To address these challenges, we present SOTER, a robotics programming
framework with two key components: (1) a programming language for implementing
and testing high-level reactive robotics software and (2) an integrated runtime
assurance (RTA) system that helps enable the use of uncertified components,
while still providing safety guarantees. SOTER provides language primitives to
declaratively construct a RTA module consisting of an advanced,
high-performance controller (uncertified), a safe, lower-performance controller
(certified), and the desired safety specification. The framework provides a
formal guarantee that a well-formed RTA module always satisfies the safety
specification, without completely sacrificing performance by using higher
performance uncertified components whenever safe. SOTER allows the complex
robotics software stack to be constructed as a composition of RTA modules,
where each uncertified component is protected using a RTA module.
To demonstrate the efficacy of our framework, we consider a real-world
case-study of building a safe drone surveillance system. Our experiments both
in simulation and on actual drones show that the SOTER-enabled RTA ensures the
safety of the system, including when untrusted third-party components have bugs
or deviate from the desired behavior
Performance Evaluation of Components Using a Granularity-based Interface Between Real-Time Calculus and Timed Automata
To analyze complex and heterogeneous real-time embedded systems, recent works
have proposed interface techniques between real-time calculus (RTC) and timed
automata (TA), in order to take advantage of the strengths of each technique
for analyzing various components. But the time to analyze a state-based
component modeled by TA may be prohibitively high, due to the state space
explosion problem. In this paper, we propose a framework of granularity-based
interfacing to speed up the analysis of a TA modeled component. First, we
abstract fine models to work with event streams at coarse granularity. We
perform analysis of the component at multiple coarse granularities and then
based on RTC theory, we derive lower and upper bounds on arrival patterns of
the fine output streams using the causality closure algorithm. Our framework
can help to achieve tradeoffs between precision and analysis time.Comment: QAPL 201
A simple conceptual model of abrupt glacial climate events
Here we use a very simple conceptual model in an attempt to reduce essential
parts of the complex nonlinearity of abrupt glacial climate changes (the
so-called Dansgaard-Oeschger events) to a few simple principles, namely (i) a
threshold process, (ii) an overshooting in the stability of the system and
(iii) a millennial-scale relaxation. By comparison with a so-called Earth
system model of intermediate complexity (CLIMBER-2), in which the events
represent oscillations between two climate states corresponding to two
fundamentally different modes of deep-water formation in the North Atlantic, we
demonstrate that the conceptual model captures fundamental aspects of the
nonlinearity of the events in that model. We use the conceptual model in order
to reproduce and reanalyse nonlinear resonance mechanisms that were already
suggested in order to explain the characteristic time scale of
Dansgaard-Oeschger events. In doing so we identify a new form of stochastic
resonance (i.e. an overshooting stochastic resonance) and provide the first
explicitly reported manifestation of ghost resonance in a geosystem, i.e. of a
mechanism which could be relevant for other systems with thresholds and with
multiple states of operation. Our work enables us to explicitly simulate
realistic probability measures of Dansgaard-Oeschger events (e.g. waiting time
distributions, which are a prerequisite for statistical analyses on the
regularity of the events by means of Monte-Carlo simulations). We thus think
that our study is an important advance in order to develop more adequate
methods to test the statistical significance and the origin of the proposed
glacial 1470-year climate cycle
Application of High-precision Timing Systems to Distributed Survey Systems
In any hydrographic survey system that consists of more than one computer, one of the most difficult integration problems is to ensure that all components maintain a coherent sense of time. Since virtually all modern survey systems are of this type, timekeeping and synchronized timestamping of data as it is created is of significant concern. This paper describes a method for resolving this problem based on the IEEE 1588 Precise Time Protocol (PTP) implemented by hardware devices, layered with some custom software called the Software Grandmaster (SWGM) algorithm. This combination of hardware and software maintains a coherent sense of time between multiple ethernet-connected computers, on the order of 100 ns (rms) in the best case, of the timebase established by the local GPS-receiver clock. We illustrate the performance of this techniques in a practical survey system using a Reson 7P sonar processor connected to a Reson 7125 Multibeam Echosounder (MBES), integrated with an Applanix POS/MV 320 V4 and a conventional data capture computer. Using the timing capabilities of the PTP hardware implementations, we show that the timepieces achieve mean (hardware based) synchronization and timestamping within 100-150 ns (rms), and that the data created at the Reson 7P without hardware timestamps has a latency variability of 28 µs (rms) due to software constraints within the capture system. This compares to 288 ms (rms) using Reson’s standard hybrid hardware/software solution, and 13.6 ms (rms) using a conventional single-oscillator timestamping model
Modeling and visualizing networked multi-core embedded software energy consumption
In this report we present a network-level multi-core energy model and a
software development process workflow that allows software developers to
estimate the energy consumption of multi-core embedded programs. This work
focuses on a high performance, cache-less and timing predictable embedded
processor architecture, XS1. Prior modelling work is improved to increase
accuracy, then extended to be parametric with respect to voltage and frequency
scaling (VFS) and then integrated into a larger scale model of a network of
interconnected cores. The modelling is supported by enhancements to an open
source instruction set simulator to provide the first network timing aware
simulations of the target architecture. Simulation based modelling techniques
are combined with methods of results presentation to demonstrate how such work
can be integrated into a software developer's workflow, enabling the developer
to make informed, energy aware coding decisions. A set of single-,
multi-threaded and multi-core benchmarks are used to exercise and evaluate the
models and provide use case examples for how results can be presented and
interpreted. The models all yield accuracy within an average +/-5 % error
margin
Securing Real-Time Internet-of-Things
Modern embedded and cyber-physical systems are ubiquitous. A large number of
critical cyber-physical systems have real-time requirements (e.g., avionics,
automobiles, power grids, manufacturing systems, industrial control systems,
etc.). Recent developments and new functionality requires real-time embedded
devices to be connected to the Internet. This gives rise to the real-time
Internet-of-things (RT-IoT) that promises a better user experience through
stronger connectivity and efficient use of next-generation embedded devices.
However RT- IoT are also increasingly becoming targets for cyber-attacks which
is exacerbated by this increased connectivity. This paper gives an introduction
to RT-IoT systems, an outlook of current approaches and possible research
challenges towards secure RT- IoT frameworks
Modeling, Analysis, and Hard Real-time Scheduling of Adaptive Streaming Applications
In real-time systems, the application's behavior has to be predictable at
compile-time to guarantee timing constraints. However, modern streaming
applications which exhibit adaptive behavior due to mode switching at run-time,
may degrade system predictability due to unknown behavior of the application
during mode transitions. Therefore, proper temporal analysis during mode
transitions is imperative to preserve system predictability. To this end, in
this paper, we initially introduce Mode Aware Data Flow (MADF) which is our new
predictable Model of Computation (MoC) to efficiently capture the behavior of
adaptive streaming applications. Then, as an important part of the operational
semantics of MADF, we propose the Maximum-Overlap Offset (MOO) which is our
novel protocol for mode transitions. The main advantage of this transition
protocol is that, in contrast to self-timed transition protocols, it avoids
timing interference between modes upon mode transitions. As a result, any mode
transition can be analyzed independently from the mode transitions that
occurred in the past. Based on this transition protocol, we propose a hard
real-time analysis as well to guarantee timing constraints by avoiding
processor overloading during mode transitions. Therefore, using this protocol,
we can derive a lower bound and an upper bound on the earliest starting time of
the tasks in the new mode during mode transitions in such a way that hard
real-time constraints are respected.Comment: Accepted for presentation at EMSOFT 2018 and for publication in IEEE
Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
(TCAD) as part of the ESWEEK-TCAD special issu
The Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey: The Multi-Telescope Robotic Observatory
The Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey (TAOS) operates four fully
automatic telescopes to search for occultations of stars by Kuiper Belt
Objects. It is a versatile facility that is also useful for the study of
initial optical GRB afterglows. This paper provides a detailed description of
the TAOS multi-telescope system, control software, and high-speed imaging.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figure
Dynamic reconfiguration technologies based on FPGA in software defined radio system
Partial Reconfiguration (PR) is a method for Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) designs which allows multiple applications to time-share a portion of an FPGA while the rest of the device continues to operate unaffected. Using this strategy, the physical layer processing architecture in Software Defined Radio (SDR) systems can benefit from reduced complexity and increased design flexibility, as different waveform applications can be grouped into one part of a single FPGA. Waveform switching often means not only changing functionality, but also changing the FPGA clock frequency. However, that is beyond the current functionality of PR processes as the clock components (such as Digital Clock Managers (DCMs)) are excluded from the process of partial reconfiguration. In this paper, we present a novel architecture that combines another reconfigurable technology, Dynamic Reconfigurable Port (DRP), with PR based on a single FPGA in order to dynamically change both functionality and also the clock frequency. The architecture is demonstrated to reduce hardware utilization significantly compared with standard, static FPGA design
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