Computer Engineering Commons^™

Invariant Inferring And Monitoring In Robotic Systems, Hengle Jiang

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

System monitoring can help to detect abnormalities and avoid failures. Crafting monitors for today’s robotic systems, however, can be very difficult due to the systems’ inherent complexity and its rich operating environment.

In this work we address this challenge through an approach that automatically infers system invariants and synthesizes those invariants into monitors. This approach is inspired by existing software engineering approaches for automated invariant inference, and it is novel in that it derives invariants by observing the messages passed between system nodes and the invariants types are tailored to match the spatial, time, temporal, and architectural attributes of robotic …

Towards A Sustainable Modular Robot System For Planetary Exploration, S. G. M. Hossain

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis investigates multiple perspectives of developing an unmanned robotic system suited for planetary terrains. In this case, the unmanned system consists of unit-modular robots. This type of robot has potential to be developed and maintained as a sustainable multi-robot system while located far from direct human intervention. Some characteristics that make this possible are: the cooperation, communication and connectivity among the robot modules, flexibility of individual robot modules, capability of self-healing in the case of a failed module and the ability to generate multiple gaits by means of reconfiguration. To demonstrate the effects of high flexibility of an individual …