Safety-aware Management of robot’s Interruptible Tasks in dynamic environments.

• A development procedure (SPSysDP) and a meta-model (SPSysML) for Simulation-Physical systems incorporating digital twins and their hardware equivalents (physical twins)
SPSysML documentation

• Example gantt chart of robot tasks

1. T. Winiarski
   MeROS: SysML-based Metamodel for ROS-based Systems
   IEEE Access, vol. 11, pp. 82802–82815, 2023
   [ BIB | DOI | abstract ]

   @article{meros-access-twiki,
     author = {Winiarski, Tomasz},
     journal = {IEEE Access},
     title = {{MeROS: SysML-based Metamodel for ROS-based Systems}},
     year = {2023},
     pages = {82802-82815},
     volume = {11},
     doi = {10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3301727},
     projects = {SMIT},
     twiki = {article}
   }
   

   The complexity of today’s robot control systems implies difficulty in developing them efficiently and reliably. Systems engineering (SE) and frameworks come to help. The framework metamodels are needed to support the standardisation and correctness of the created application models. Although the use of frameworks is widespread nowadays, for the most popular of them, Robot Operating System (ROS), a contemporary metamodel has been missing so far. This article proposes a new metamodel for ROS called MeROS, which addresses the running system and developer workspace. The ROS comes in two versions: ROS 1 and ROS 2. The metamodel includes both versions. In particular, the latest ROS 1 concepts are considered, such as nodelet, action, and metapackage. An essential addition to the original ROS concepts is the grouping of these concepts, which provides an opportunity to illustrate the system’s decomposition and varying degrees of detail in its presentation. The metamodel is derived from the requirements and verified on the practical example of Rico assistive robot. The matter is described in a standardised way in SysML (Systems Modeling Language). Hence, common development tools that support SysML can help develop robot controllers in the spirit of SE.

2. W. Dudek, N. Miguel, and T. Winiarski
   SPSysML: A meta-model for quantitative evaluation of Simulation-Physical Systems
   arXiv:2303.09565, 2023
   [ BIB | DOI | abstract ]

   @article{dudek2023spsysml-twiki,
     author = {Dudek, Wojciech and Miguel, Narcis and Winiarski, Tomasz},
     journal = {arXiv:2303.09565},
     title = {{SPSysML: A meta-model for quantitative evaluation of Simulation-Physical Systems}},
     year = {2023},
     doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2303.09565},
     projects = {SMIT},
     twiki = {article}
   }
   

   Robotic systems are complex cyber-physical systems (CPS) commonly equipped with multiple sensors and effectors. Recent simulation methods enable the Digital Twin (DT) concept realisation. However, DT employment in robotic system development, e.g. in-development testing, is unclear. During the system development, its parts evolve from simulated mockups to physical parts which run software deployed on the actual hardware. Therefore, a design tool and a flexible development procedure ensuring the integrity of the simulated and physical parts are required. We aim to maximise the integration between a CPS’s simulated and physical parts in various setups. The better integration, the better simulation-based testing coverage of the physical part (hardware and software). We propose a Domain Specification Language (DSL) based on Systems Modeling Language (SysML) that we refer to as SPSysML (Simulation-Physical System Modeling Language). SPSysML defines the taxonomy of a Simulation-Physical System (SPSys), being a CPS consisting of at least a physical or simulated part. In particular, the simulated ones can be DTs. We propose a SPSys Development Procedure (SPSysDP) that enables the maximisation of the simulation-physical integrity of SPSys by evaluating the proposed factors. SPSysDP is used to develop a complex robotic system for the INCARE project. In subsequent iterations of SPSysDP, the simulation-physical integrity of the system is maximised. As a result, the system model consists of fewer components, and a greater fraction of the system components are shared between various system setups. We implement and test the system with popular frameworks, Robot Operating System (ROS) and Gazebo simulator. SPSysML with SPSysDP enables the design of SPSys (including DT and CPS), multi-setup system development featuring maximised integrity between simulation and physical parts in its setups.