Formal Test Synthesis for Safety-Critical Autonomous Systems based on Control Barrier Functions

Title	Formal Test Synthesis for Safety-Critical Autonomous Systems based on Control Barrier Functions
Authors	Prithvi Akella, Mohamadreza Ahmadi, Richard M. Murray and Aaron D. Ames
Source	To appear, 2020 Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)
Abstract	The prolific rise in autonomous systems has led to questions regarding their safe instantiation in real-world scenarios. Failures in safety-critical contexts such as human-robot interactions or even autonomous driving can ultimately lead to loss of life. In this context, this paper aims to provide a method by which one can algorithmically test and evaluate an autonomous system. Given a black-box autonomous system with some operational specifications, we construct a minimax problem based on control barrier functions to generate a family of test parameters designed to optimally evaluate whether the system can satisfy the specifications. To illustrate our results, we utilize the Robotarium as a case study for an autonomous system that claims to satisfy waypoint navigation and obstacle avoidance simultaneously. We demonstrate that the proposed test synthesis framework systematically finds those sequences of events (tests) that identify points of system failure.
Type	Conference paper
URL	https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04227
DOI
Tag	AAMA20-cdc
ID	2020a
Funding	AFOSR T&E
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