CaRE: Finding Root Causes of Configuration Issues in Highly-Configurable Robots

摘要

Robotic systems have subsystems with a combinatorially large configuration space and hundreds or thousands of possible software and hardware configuration options interacting non-trivially. The configurable parameters are set to target specific objectives, but they can cause functional faults when incorrectly configured. Finding the root cause of such faults is challenging due to the exponentially large configuration space and the dependencies between the robot's configuration settings and performance. This paper proposes C <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">a</small> RE—a method for diagnosing the root cause of functional faults through the lens of causality. C <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">a</small> RE abstracts the causal relationships between various configuration options and the robot's performance objectives by learning a causal structure and estimating the causal effects of options on robot performance indicators. We demonstrate C <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">a</small> RE’s efficacy by finding the root cause of the observed functional faults and validating the diagnosed root cause by conducting experiments in both physical robots ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Husky</i> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Turtlebot 3</i> ) and in simulation ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Gazebo</i> ). Furthermore, we demonstrate that the causal models learned from robots in simulation (e.g., <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Husky</i> in <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Gazebo</i> ) are transferable to physical robots across different platforms (e.g., <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Husky</i> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Turtlebot 3</i> ).