5,158 research outputs found
Systematic and Realistic Testing in Simulation of Control Code for Robots in Collaborative Human-Robot Interactions
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. Industries such as flexible manufacturing and home care will be transformed by the presence of robotic assistants. Assurance of safety and functional soundness for these robotic systems will require rigorous verification and validation. We propose testing in simulation using Coverage-Driven Verification (CDV) to guide the testing process in an automatic and systematic way. We use a two-tiered test generation approach, where abstract test sequences are computed first and then concretized (e.g., data and variables are instantiated), to reduce the complexity of the test generation problem. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, we developed a testbench for robotic code, running in ROS-Gazebo, that implements an object handover as part of a humanrobot interaction (HRI) task. Tests are generated to stimulate the robot’s code in a realistic manner, through stimulating the human, environment, sensors, and actuators in simulation. We compare the merits of unconstrained, constrained and model-based test generation in achieving thorough exploration of the code under test, and interesting combinations of human-robot interactions. Our results show that CDV combined with systematic test generation achieves a very high degree of automation in simulation-based verification of control code for robots in HRI
An Open-Source Simulator for Cognitive Robotics Research: The Prototype of the iCub Humanoid Robot Simulator
This paper presents the prototype of a new computer simulator for the humanoid robot iCub. The iCub is a new open-source humanoid robot developed as a result of the “RobotCub” project, a collaborative European project aiming at developing a new open-source cognitive robotics platform. The iCub simulator has been developed as part of a joint effort with the European project “ITALK” on the integration and transfer of action and language knowledge in cognitive robots. This is available open-source to all researchers interested in cognitive robotics experiments with the iCub humanoid platform
A gentle transition from Java programming to Web Services using XML-RPC
Exposing students to leading edge vocational areas of relevance such as Web Services can be difficult. We show a lightweight approach by embedding a key component of Web Services within a Level 3 BSc module in Distributed Computing. We present a ready to use collection of lecture slides and student activities based on XML-RPC. In
addition we show that this material addresses the central topics in the context of web services as identified by Draganova (2003)
Simulation-based Testing for Early Safety-Validation of Robot Systems
Industrial human-robot collaborative systems must be validated thoroughly
with regard to safety. The sooner potential hazards for workers can be exposed,
the less costly is the implementation of necessary changes. Due to the
complexity of robot systems, safety flaws often stay hidden, especially at
early design stages, when a physical implementation is not yet available for
testing. Simulation-based testing is a possible way to identify hazards in an
early stage. However, creating simulation conditions in which hazards become
observable can be difficult. Brute-force or Monte-Carlo-approaches are often
not viable for hazard identification, due to large search spaces. This work
addresses this problem by using a human model and an optimization algorithm to
generate high-risk human behavior in simulation, thereby exposing potential
hazards. A proof of concept is shown in an application example where the method
is used to find hazards in an industrial robot cell
Human-Robot Gym: Benchmarking Reinforcement Learning in Human-Robot Collaboration
Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has shown promising results in robot motion
planning with first attempts in human-robot collaboration (HRC). However, a
fair comparison of RL approaches in HRC under the constraint of guaranteed
safety is yet to be made. We, therefore, present human-robot gym, a benchmark
for safe RL in HRC. Our benchmark provides eight challenging, realistic HRC
tasks in a modular simulation framework. Most importantly, human-robot gym
includes a safety shield that provably guarantees human safety. We are,
thereby, the first to provide a benchmark to train RL agents that adhere to the
safety specifications of real-world HRC. This bridges a critical gap between
theoretic RL research and its real-world deployment. Our evaluation of six
environments led to three key results: (a) the diverse nature of the tasks
offered by human-robot gym creates a challenging benchmark for state-of-the-art
RL methods, (b) incorporating expert knowledge in the RL training in the form
of an action-based reward can outperform the expert, and (c) our agents
negligibly overfit to training data
Robotics Software Engineering: A Perspective from the Service Robotics Domain
Robots that support humans by performing useful tasks (a.k.a., service
robots) are booming worldwide. In contrast to industrial robots, the
development of service robots comes with severe software engineering
challenges, since they require high levels of robustness and autonomy to
operate in highly heterogeneous environments. As a domain with critical safety
implications, service robotics faces a need for sound software development
practices. In this paper, we present the first large-scale empirical study to
assess the state of the art and practice of robotics software engineering. We
conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with industrial practitioners working
in 15 companies from 9 different countries and a survey with 156 respondents
(from 26 countries) from the robotics domain. Our results provide a
comprehensive picture of (i) the practices applied by robotics industrial and
academic practitioners, including processes, paradigms, languages, tools,
frameworks, and reuse practices, (ii) the distinguishing characteristics of
robotics software engineering, and (iii) recurrent challenges usually faced,
together with adopted solutions. The paper concludes by discussing
observations, derived hypotheses, and proposed actions for researchers and
practitioners.Comment: 11 pages + 1 page for references, 3 figures, 3 tables, in proceedings
of ESEC/FSE 202
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