FORMAL VERIFICATION OF SAFETY BEHAVIOURS OF THE OUTDOOR ROBOT RAVON

Abstract

Behaviour-based control, formal verification, outdoor robotics. This paper presents an approach to the formal verification of safety properties of the behaviour-based control network of the mobile outdoor robot RAVON. In particular, we consider behaviours that are used for the computation of the projected vehicle’s velocity from obstacle proximity sensor data and inclination information. We describe how this group of behaviours is implemented in the synchronous language Quartz in order to be formally verified using model checking techniques of the Averest verification framework. Moreover, by integrating the automatically generated and verified code into the behaviour network, it can be guaranteed that the robot slows down and stops as required by the given safety specifications. 1