11 research outputs found
Towards Verifiably Ethical Robot Behaviour
Ensuring that autonomous systems work ethically is both complex and
difficult. However, the idea of having an additional `governor' that assesses
options the system has, and prunes them to select the most ethical choices is
well understood. Recent work has produced such a governor consisting of a
`consequence engine' that assesses the likely future outcomes of actions then
applies a Safety/Ethical logic to select actions. Although this is appealing,
it is impossible to be certain that the most ethical options are actually
taken. In this paper we extend and apply a well-known agent verification
approach to our consequence engine, allowing us to verify the correctness of
its ethical decision-making.Comment: Presented at the 1st International Workshop on AI and Ethics, Sunday
25th January 2015, Hill Country A, Hyatt Regency Austin. Will appear in the
workshop proceedings published by AAA
A Double-Level Model Checking Approach for an Agent-Based Autonomous Vehicle and Road Junction Regulations
From MDPI via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: accepted 2021-06-21, pub-electronic 2021-06-25Publication status: PublishedFunder: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; Grant(s): EP/V026801Usually, the design of an Autonomous Vehicle (AV) does not take into account traffic rules and so the adoption of these rules can bring some challenges, e.g., how to come up with a Digital Highway Code which captures the proper behaviour of an AV against the traffic rules and at the same time minimises changes to the existing Highway Code? Here, we formally model and implement three Road Junction rules (from the UK Highway Code). We use timed automata to model the system and the MCAPL (Model Checking Agent Programming Language) framework to implement an agent and its environment. We also assess the behaviour of our agent according to the Road Junction rules using a double-level Model Checking technique, i.e., UPPAAL at the design level and AJPF (Agent Java PathFinder) at the development level. We have formally verified 30 properties (18 with UPPAAL and 12 with AJPF), where these properties describe the agentâs behaviour against the three Road Junction rules using a simulated traffic scenario, including artefacts like traffic signs and road users. In addition, our approach aims to extract the best from the double-level verification, i.e., using time constraints in UPPAAL timed automata to determine thresholds for the AVs actions and tracing the agentâs behaviour by using MCAPL, in a way that one can tell when and how a given Road Junction rule was selected by the agent. This work provides a proof-of-concept for the formal verification of AV behaviour with respect to traffic rules
Agents and Robots for Reliable Engineered Autonomy
This book contains the contributions of the Special Issue entitled "Agents and Robots for Reliable Engineered Autonomy". The Special Issue was based on the successful first edition of the "Workshop on Agents and Robots for reliable Engineered Autonomy" (AREA 2020), co-located with the 24th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2020). The aim was to bring together researchers from autonomous agents, as well as software engineering and robotics communities, as combining knowledge from these three research areas may lead to innovative approaches that solve complex problems related to the verification and validation of autonomous robotic systems
Logic-based Technologies for Multi-agent Systems: A Systematic Literature Review
Precisely when the success of artiïŹcial intelligence (AI) sub-symbolic techniques makes them be identiïŹed with the whole AI by many non-computerscientists and non-technical media, symbolic approaches are getting more and more attention as those that could make AI amenable to human understanding. Given the recurring cycles in the AI history, we expect that a revamp of technologies often tagged as âclassical AIâ â in particular, logic-based ones will take place in the next few years.
On the other hand, agents and multi-agent systems (MAS) have been at the core of the design of intelligent systems since their very beginning, and their long-term connection with logic-based technologies, which characterised their early days, might open new ways to engineer explainable intelligent systems. This is why understanding the current status of logic-based technologies for MAS is nowadays of paramount importance.
Accordingly, this paper aims at providing a comprehensive view of those technologies by making them the subject of a systematic literature review (SLR). The resulting technologies are discussed and evaluated from two different perspectives: the MAS and the logic-based ones
An Unexpected Journey: Towards Runtime Verification of Multiagent Systems and Beyond
The Trace Expression formalism derives from works started in 2012 and is
mainly used to specify and verify interaction protocols at runtime, but other
applications have been devised. More specically, this thesis describes how
to extend and apply such formalism in the engineering process of distributed
articial intelligence systems (such as Multiagent systems).
This thesis extends the state of the art through four dierent contributions:
1. Theoretical: the thesis extends the original formalism in order to represent
also parametric and probabilistic specications (parametric trace
expressions and probabilistic trace expressions respectively).
2. Algorithmic: the thesis proposes algorithms for verifying trace expressions
at runtime in a decentralized way. The algorithms have been
designed to be as general as possible, but their implementation and
experimentation address scenarios where the modelled and observed
events are communicative events (interactions) inside a multiagent system.
3. Application: the thesis analyzes the relations between runtime and static
verication (e.g. model checking) proposing hybrid integrations in both
directions. First of all, the thesis proposes a trace expression model
checking approach where it shows how to statically verify LTL property
on a trace expression specication. After that, the thesis presents a
novel approach for supporting static verication through the addition
of monitors at runtime (post-process).
4. Implementation: the thesis presents RIVERtools, a tool supporting the
writing, the syntactic analysis and the decentralization of trace expressions
Agents and Robots for Reliable Engineered Autonomy:A Perspective from the Organisers of AREA 2020
From MDPI via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: accepted 2021-05-13, pub-electronic 2021-05-14Publication status: PublishedFunder: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; Grant(s): EP/R026092, EP/R026173, EP/R026084, 694277Multi-agent systems, robotics and software engineering are large and active research areas with many applications in academia and industry. The First Workshop on Agents and Robots for reliable Engineered Autonomy (AREA), organised the first time in 2020, aims at encouraging cross-disciplinary collaborations and exchange of ideas among researchers working in these research areas. This paper presents a perspective of the organisers that aims at highlighting the latest research trends, future directions, challenges, and open problems. It also includes feedback from the discussions held during the AREA workshop. The goal of this perspective is to provide a high-level view of current research trends for researchers that aim at working in the intersection of these research areas
An Overview of Verification and Validation Challenges for Inspection Robots
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 UKâs âRobots for a Safer Worldâ 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 robot
Towards the formal verification of human-agent-robot teamwork
The formal analysis of computational processes is by now a well-established field. However, in practical scenarios, the problem of how we can formally verify interactions with humans still remains. This thesis is concerned with addressing this problem through the use of the Brahms language. Our overall goal is to provide formal verification techniques for human-agent teamwork, particularly astronaut-robot teamwork on future space missions and human-robot interactions in health-care scenarios modelled in Brahms