SOTER: A Runtime Assurance Framework for Programming Safe Robotics Systems

Ankush Desai, Shromona Ghosh, Sanjit A. Seshia, Natarajan Shankar, and Ashish Tiwari. SOTER: A Runtime Assurance Framework for Programming Safe Robotics Systems. In IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), June 2019.

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Abstract

The recent drive towards achieving greater autonomy and intelligence in robotics has led to high levels of complexity. Autonomous robots increasingly depend on third-party off-the-shelf components and complex machine-learning techniques. This trend makes it challenging to provide strong design-time certification of correct operation.<p>To address these challenges, we present SOTER, a robotics programming framework with two key components: (1) a programming language for implementing and testing high-level reactive robotics software, and (2) an integrated runtime assurance (RTA) system that helps enable the use of uncertified components, while still providing safety guarantees. SOTER provides language primitives to declaratively construct a RTA module consisting of an advanced, high-performance controller (uncertified), a safe, lower-performance controller (certified), and the desired safety specification. The framework provides a formal guarantee that a well-formed RTA module always satisfies the safety specification, without completely sacrificing performance by using higher performance uncertified components whenever safe. SOTER allows the complex robotics software stack to be constructed as a composition of RTA modules, where each uncertified component is protected using a RTA module. <p> To demonstrate the efficacy of our framework, we consider a real-world case-study of building a safe drone surveillance system. Our experiments both in simulation and on actual drones show that the SOTER-enabled RTA ensures the safety of the system, including when untrusted third-party components have bugs or deviate from the desired behavior.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{desai-dsn19,
  title = {SOTER: A Runtime Assurance Framework for Programming Safe Robotics Systems},
  author = {Ankush Desai and Shromona Ghosh and Sanjit A. Seshia and Natarajan Shankar and Ashish Tiwari},
  booktitle = {IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN)}, 
  year = {2019},
  month = jun,
  abstract = {The recent drive towards achieving greater autonomy and intelligence in robotics has led to high levels of 
complexity. Autonomous robots increasingly depend on third-party off-the-shelf components and complex machine-learning 
techniques. This trend makes it challenging to provide strong 
design-time certification of correct operation.
<p>
To address these challenges, we present SOTER, a robotics programming framework with two key components: (1) a programming language for implementing and testing high-level reactive 
robotics software, and (2) an integrated runtime assurance (RTA)  
system that helps enable the use of uncertified components,  
while still providing safety guarantees. SOTER provides language  
primitives to declaratively construct a RTA module consisting of  
an advanced, high-performance controller (uncertified), a safe,  
lower-performance controller (certified), and the desired safety  
specification. The framework provides a formal guarantee that a  
well-formed RTA module always satisfies the safety specification,  
without completely sacrificing performance by using higher performance uncertified components whenever safe. SOTER allows  
the complex robotics software stack to be constructed as a  
composition of RTA modules, where each uncertified component  
is protected using a RTA module.  
<p> To demonstrate the efficacy of our framework, we consider  
a real-world case-study of building a safe drone surveillance  
system. Our experiments both in simulation and on actual drones  
show that the SOTER-enabled RTA ensures the safety of the  
system, including when untrusted third-party components have  
bugs or deviate from the desired behavior.},
}