Robots are used in inaccessible or hazardous environments in order
to alleviate some of the time, cost and risk involved in preparing
men to endure these conditions. In order to perform their
expected tasks, the robots are often quite complex, thus increasing
their potential for failures. If men must be sent into these
environments to repair each component failure in the robot, the
advantages of using the robot are quickly lost. Fault tolerant
robots are needed which can effectively cope with failures and
continue their tasks until repairs can be realistically scheduled.
Before fault tolerant capabilities can be created, methods of detecting
and pinpointing failures must be perfected. This paper
develops a basic fault tree analysis of a robot in order to obtain
a better understanding of where failures can occur and how they
contribute to other failures in the robot. The resulting failure
flow chart can also be used to analyze the resiliency of the robot
in the presence of specific faults. By simulating robot failures
and fault detection schemes, the problems involved in detecting
failures for robots are explored in more depth. Future work
will extend the analyses done in this paper to enhance Trick, a
robotic simulation testbed, with fault tolerant capabilities in an
expert system package.National Science FoundationMitre Corporation Graduate FellowshipNSF Graduate Fellowshi
