Optimal Observation Mode Scheduling for Systems under Temporal Constraints

TL;DR

This paper develops optimal strategies for scheduling observation modes in autonomous systems with multiple sensors, ensuring temporal property satisfaction while minimizing resource costs, applicable to robotic control scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces correct and optimal solutions for control and observation mode switching problems under temporal constraints in nondeterministic systems.

Findings

Optimal control and observation strategies guarantee satisfaction of temporal properties.

Strategies minimize worst-case resource costs until property satisfaction.

Validated on a robotic application case study.

Abstract

Autonomous control systems use various sensors to decrease the amount of uncertainty under which they operate. While providing partial observation of the current state of the system, sensors require resources such as energy, time and communication. We consider discrete systems with non-deterministic transitions and multiple observation modes. The observation modes provide different information about the states of the system and are associated with non-negative costs. We consider two control problems. First, we aim to construct a control and observation mode switching strategy that guarantees satisfaction of a finite-time temporal property given as a formula of syntactically co-safe fragment of LTL (scLTL) and at the same time, minimizes the worst-case cost accumulated until the point of satisfaction. Second, the bounded version of the problem is considered, where the temporal property must be satisfied within given finite time bound. We present correct and optimal solutions to both problems and demonstrate their usability on a case study motivated by robotic applications.