Establishing A-Priori Performance Guarantees for Robot Missions that Include Localization Software

One approach to determining whether an automated system is performing correctly is to monitor its performance, signaling when the performance is not acceptable; another approach is to automatically analyze the possible behaviors of the system a-priori and determine performance guarantees. Thea authors have applied this second approach to automatically derive performance guarantees for behavior-based, multi-robot critical mission software using an innovative approach to formal verification for robotic software. Localization and mapping algorithms can allow a robot to navigate well in an unknown environment. However, whether such algorithms enhance any specific robot mission is currently a matter for empirical validation. Several approaches to incorporating pre-existing software into the authors' probabilistic verification framework are presented, and one used to include Monte-Carlo based localization software. Verification and experimental validation results are discussed for real localization missions with this software, showing that the proposed approach accurately predicts performance.