995 research outputs found
Failure Handling in BDI Plans via Runtime Enforcement
This project CONVINCE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon research and innovation programme G.A. n. 101070227. This publication is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Commission (the granting authority). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for themPublisher PD
Formal Verification of a Map Merging Protocol in the Multi-Agent Programming Contest
Communication is a critical part of enabling multi-agent systems to cooperate. This means that applying formal methods to protocols governing communication within multi-agent systems provides useful confidence in its reliability. In this paper, we describe the formal verification of a complex communication protocol that coordinates agents merging maps of their environment. The protocol was used by the LFC team in the 2019 edition of the Multi-Agent Programming Contest (MAPC). Our specification of the protocol is written in Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP), which is a well-suited approach to specifying agent communication protocols due to its focus on concurrent communicating systems. We validate the specification's behaviour using scenarios where the correct behaviour is known, and verify that eventually all the maps have merged
Resilience, reliability, and coordination in autonomous multi-agent systems
Acknowledgements The research reported in this paper was funded and supported by various grants over the years: Robotics and AI in Nuclear (RAIN) Hub (EP/R026084/1); Future AI and Robotics for Space (FAIR-SPACE) Hub (EP/R026092/1); Offshore Robotics for Certification of Assets (ORCA) Hub (EP/R026173/1); the Royal Academy of Engineering under the Chair in Emerging Technologies scheme; Trustworthy Autonomous Systems “Verifiability Node” (EP/V026801); Scrutable Autonomous Systems (EP/J012084/1); Supporting Security Policy with Effective Digital Intervention (EP/P011829/1); The International Technology Alliance in Network and Information Sciences.Peer reviewedPostprin
Updating Action Descriptions and Plans for Cognitive Agents
Extended Abstract and Poster PresentationPostprin
A Compositional Approach to Verifying Modular Robotic Systems
Robotic systems used in safety-critical industrial situations often rely on
modular software architectures, and increasingly include autonomous components.
Verifying that these modular robotic systems behave as expected requires
approaches that can cope with, and preferably take advantage of, this inherent
modularity. This paper describes a compositional approach to specifying the
nodes in robotic systems built using the Robotic Operating System (ROS), where
each node is specified using First-Order Logic (FOL) assume-guarantee contracts
that link the specification to the ROS implementation. We introduce inference
rules that facilitate the composition of these node-level contracts to derive
system-level properties. We also present a novel Domain-Specific Language, the
ROS Contract Language, which captures a node's FOL specification and links this
contract to its implementation. RCL contracts can be automatically translated,
by our tool Vanda, into executable monitors; which we use to verify the
contracts at runtime. We illustrate our approach through the specification and
verification of an autonomous rover engaged in the remote inspection of a
nuclear site, and finish with smaller examples that illustrate other useful
features of our framework.Comment: Version submitted to RA
Using a BDI Agent to Represent a Human on the Factory Floor of the ARIAC 2023 Industrial Automation Competition
Postprin
Depairing critical current achieved in superconducting thin films with through-thickness arrays of artificial pinning centers
Large area arrays of through-thickness nanoscale pores have been milled into
superconducting Nb thin films via a process utilizing anodized aluminum oxide
thin film templates. These pores act as artificial flux pinning centers,
increasing the superconducting critical current, Jc, of the Nb films. By
optimizing the process conditions including anodization time, pore size and
milling time, Jc values approaching and in some cases matching the
Ginzburg-Landau depairing current of 30 MA/cm^2 at 5 K have been achieved - a
Jc enhancement over as-deposited films of more than 50 times. In the field
dependence of Jc, a matching field corresponding to the areal pore density has
also been clearly observed. The effect of back-filling the pores with magnetic
material has then been investigated. While back-filling with Co has been
successfully achieved, the effect of the magnetic material on Jc has been found
to be largely detrimental compared to voids, although a distinct influence of
the magnetic material in producing a hysteretic Jc versus applied field
behavior has been observed. This behavior has been tested for compatibility
with currently proposed models of magnetic pinning and found to be most closely
explained by a model describing the magnetic attraction between the flux
vortices and the magnetic inclusions.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure
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