Establishing Reliable Robot Behavior using Capability Analysis Tables

TL;DR

This paper introduces Capability Analysis Tables (CATs), a flexible and understandable documentation method linking robot inputs and outputs to core behaviors, enhancing reliability and ease of understanding for complex robotic systems.

Contribution

It presents a novel, easy-to-build documentation approach using CATs to improve robot reliability and facilitate understanding for non-expert users.

Findings

CATs effectively document robot core behaviors

Improved reliability through structured documentation

Applicable to complex systems like UAVs

Abstract

Robots are often so complex that one person may not know all the ins and outs of the system. Inheriting software and hardware infrastructure with limited documentation and/or practical robot experience presents a costly challenge for an engineer or researcher. The choice is to either re-build existing systems, or invest in learning the existing framework. No matter the choice, a reliable system which produces expected outcomes is necessary, and while rebuilding may at first appear easier than learning the system, future users will be faced with the same choice. This paper provides a method to allow for increased documentation of the robotic system, which in turn can be used to contribute in overall robot reliability. To do this we propose the identification of a robot's core behaviors for use in Capability Analysis Tables (CATs). CATs are a form of tabular documentation that connect the hardware and software inputs and outputs to the robot's core behaviors. Unlike existing methods, CATs are flexible, easy to build, and understandable by non-expert robot users. We demonstrate this documentation method with an experimental example using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).