2014 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Automatic Verification of Distributed Mobile Robot Algorithms
| Project/Area Number |
26870228
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| Research Institution | Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
BONNET Francois 北陸先端科学技術大学院大学, 情報科学研究科, 助教 (60700185)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
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| Keywords | Robot / Computing / Algorithm / Verification |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Our goal is to develop a generic verification tool for robot algorithms. After one year of research, we obtain two results worth publishing. Both of them are of course related to robot algorithms, but the considered problems are different. The first one is related to the problem of perpetual exploration by robots, while the second contribution analyzes the gathering problem of robots.
1) Paper published in WSSR-SRDS'14. Our method permits to discover new protocols solving the exploration problem, and to assess specific optimization criteria (such as individual coverage, visits frequency, etc.) that are met by those protocols.
2) Paper submitted to SIROCCO'15 (co-authored with M. Potop-Butucaru, and S. Tixeuil): With the help of our verification tool, we could design and check new algorithms to solve the gathering problem in rings with four robots. More precisely, we studied the class of configurations SP4 which is the single class left open in this context.
In addition to the two papers mentioned above, we would like to add the following paper which is also partially related to the same research topic (mobile entities in distributed systems):
3) Paper published in DISC'14: We investigate the problem of Byzantine Agreement in a synchronous system where malicious mobile agents can move from process to process, corrupting their host.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
We could include some new functionalities in our verification tool, such as (1) taking into account the possibility of robots to create tower (multiple robots on the same location), (2) allowing the activations of multiple robots in the same round, (3) including the gathering problem in addition to the exploration problem that we initially considered.
Following these improvements, as expected in the plan, we could obtain some interesting results from the first year.
Such progress was made possible due to meetings with other researchers while attending conferences (especially DISC'14) and during a visiting trip to LIP6 (University of Paris 6) in early 2015.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
The tool we are developing has been used to obtain new results. However, up to now, it has been used only by ourselves. Therefore, in fiscal year 2015, we would like to focus on the following directions (which globally corresponds to the tasks described in the initial proposal):
1) Continue to improve the tool by adding new functionalities and options. It would certainly also include a simplification of the tool usage (necessary for the second item below).
2) Introduce more widely the tool to the community and encourage other researchers to use it for their own purpose.
3) Keep obtaining and publishing new results.
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