A simplified situational environment risk and system reliability assessment for behavior assurance of autonomous and semi-autonomous aerial systems: A simulation study

Abstract

Autonomous and semi-autonomous aerial systems (AES) as example of autonomous and semi-autonomous systems (AS) have to perform tasks in complex and dynamic environment, for example in logistics and transportation applications. In this context AS's behavior has to be verifyably safe. Traditionally, behavioral safety aspects are combined with mission-related tasks. The consequence of this combination may be unmanageable system's complexity as well as unpredictable effects during the interaction with the environment leading to inapplicability of traditional safety assurance methods. Furthermore, real-time system's hardware reliability assessment and management are often not considered. This paper introduces a novel simplified real-time environmental situation risk assessment approach to be applied for determination of required situational AS's reliability. Furthermore, the novel real-time AS's hardware reliability assessment and situational hardware structure and behavior control for AS's safe behavior assurance is presented. The introduced approach can verify AS's safe situational behavior by real-time environmental risk assessment and AS's hardware structure and emergency behavior control to minimize the situational risk. A technical proof of concept is given demonstrating the successful use of the introduced approach based on AES and its environment simulation using Virtual Robot Experimental Platform in combination of concept realization using real soft Programmable Logic Controller.