A systematic approach to safe coordination of dynamic participants in real-time distributed systems

Abstract

Computer systems employing autonomous robots have been demonstrated in many areas including defense and homeland security. Some of these systems are safety critical; there are safety requirements linking to human safety or crucial infrastructure. Such safety critical systems must be reliable despite having unreliable components (e.g., communication, sensors, or actuators). In addition, mobile robots may move in and out of the operational area (dynamic participant), resulting in the complexity of coordination amongst varying robot numbers. This paper presents Comheolaíocht—a systematic approach to design coordination protocols for dynamic participants in real-time distributed systems allowing autonomous mobile robots to achieve their goals safely. The three-step approach begins with system modeling to capture the system specification. The second step, system analysis, analyses the system specifications to determine whether Comheolaíocht can provide a reliable solution and if possible, outlines a coordination strategy. The third step, protocol derivation, derives the system’s coordination protocols which guarantee robots’ exclusive access to resources despite imperfect communication. The process is applied to a practical application in which autonomous vehicles coordinate to drive safely on a road.