ISBN 978-3-8439-3559-3

978-3-8439-3559-3, Reihe Robotik und Automation

Achim Wagner
Modeling, Analysis, and Design of Dependable Systems with Application to Robotics and Assistance Technology

326 Seiten, Habilitation Universität Mannheim (2015), Softcover, A5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

A unified methodology is presented for the design of dependable computer-controlled systems in the area of robotics and assistance technology. Robotic systems are treated as complex safety-critical dynamical systems providing autonomous and intelligent behavior as well as cooperative and shared control behavior with the human operators and other systems. System behavior is accompanied by uncertainty due to incomplete modeling and the unpredictable influence of the physical interaction with unknown environmental and human properties. The methodology is grounded on:

A unified dependability model based on a fundamental dynamic system description

Structural system decomposition methods and a generic system architecture as reference structure for autonomous and assistance systems

Dynamic safety control for dynamic control systems with disturbances

Generalization of active fault-tolerant control methods for complex control systems

Design of dynamics systems with human-machine-interaction

A component-based design process

Applications from medical and rehabilitation robotics, Automotive and Aerospace

A main contribution of this work is a new approach to dependability modeling based on a fundamental system description and an integrated dependability measure. In contrast to standard safety and reliability engineering methods, dependability modeling is not grounded on binary fault abstractions and randomness of component failures. Moreover, dependable dynamic systems are modeled by a combination of analytic and stochastic system description methods, which allow to predict and to redraw the curse of the system states and thus to identify the origin and time-dependent genesis of failures and malfunctions according to the observable system behavior in a specified mission.

Dependable human-machine-interaction design methods are proposed providing modeling techniques, fault-tolerant control strategies and dependability description along with the methodology for the design of dynamical systems. Finally it is demonstrated, how to integrate dependability analysis, modeling and synthesis techniques into a unified component-based design process, where hardware, software and human-machine-interaction components are treated in a unified way. The dependable design methodology is applied to medical and rehabilitation robots as well as to automotive and aerospace systems.