Error Recovery in Automation - An Overview

Abstract

This paper attempts to provide an overview of techniques and approaches to error recovery, both in automation and in other fields (such as autonomous robotics) where analogous problems occur. The term `error recovery' is often used as a common name for the three sub areas error/fault detection, error/fault diagnose, and recovery from the resulting failure. All three areas will be covered. Rather than presenting different systems and approaches in-depth, different types of systems and approaches will be presented and compared. Terminology The first observation made is that there is a lack of common terminology, e.g. the word error is sometimes used to denote the original reason why something went wrong, whereas in other cases it is used to denote the effects in the computer system due to some unforeseen event. However, in the `reliable computing' community there is an emerging standard [Laprie, 1992]. Although they are primarily interested in problems internal to a computer and its sof...