Systematic and realistic testing in simulation of control code for robots in collaborative human-robot interactions

Araiza-Illan, Dejanira; Western, David; Pipe, Anthony G.; Eder, Kerstin

Abstract

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. Industries such as flexible manufacturing and home care will be transformed by the presence of robotic assistants. Assurance of safety and functional soundness for these robotic systems will require rigorous verification and validation. We propose testing in simulation using Coverage-Driven Verification (CDV) to guide the testing process in an automatic and systematic way. We use a two-tiered test generation approach, where abstract test sequences are computed first and then concretized (e.g., data and variables are instantiated), to reduce the complexity of the test generation problem. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, we developed a testbench for robotic code, running in ROS-Gazebo, that implements an object handover as part of a humanrobot interaction (HRI) task. Tests are generated to stimulate the robot’s code in a realistic manner, through stimulating the human, environment, sensors, and actuators in simulation. We compare the merits of unconstrained, constrained and model-based test generation in achieving thorough exploration of the code under test, and interesting combinations of human-robot interactions. Our results show that CDV combined with systematic test generation achieves a very high degree of automation in simulation-based verification of control code for robots in HRI.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Acceptance Date: Apr 13, 2016
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jul 4, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 28, 2016
• Journal: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
• Print ISSN: 0302-9743
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 9716
• Pages: 20-32
• Series Title: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Book Title: Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems
• ISBN: 9783319403786
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40379-3_3
• Keywords: control code simulation, human-robot interactions
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/910785
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40379-3_3
• Contract Date: Jul 28, 2016