Formal verification of ROS-based robotic applications using timed-automata

Abstract

Robotic technologies are continuously transforming the domestic and the industrial environments. Recently the Robotic Operating System (ROS), has been widely adopted both by industry and academia, becoming one of the most popular middleware frameworks for developing robot applications. Guaranteeing the correct behaviour of robotic systems is, however, challenging due to their potential for parameterization and heterogeneity. Although different approaches exist, focusing on concrete domain spaces for specific scenarios, no general approach to reason about ROS systems has yet arisen. This paper proposes an approach to model and verify ROS systems using real time properties, focusing on one of the main features of ROS, the communication between nodes. It takes low-level parameters into account, such as queue sizes and timeouts, and uses timed automata as the modelling language. The robot Kobuki is used as a complex case study, over which properties are automatically verified using the UPPAAL model checker, enabling the identification of problematic parameter combinations.