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Barrier-Based Test Synthesis for Safety-Critical Systems Subject to Timed Reach-Avoid Specifications

Akella, Prithvi and Ahmadi, Mohamadreza and Murray, Richard M. and Ames, Aaron D. (2023) Barrier-Based Test Synthesis for Safety-Critical Systems Subject to Timed Reach-Avoid Specifications. . (Unpublished) https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20230316-204032253

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Abstract

We propose an adversarial, time-varying test-synthesis procedure for safety-critical systems without requiring specific knowledge of the underlying controller steering the system. From a broader test and evaluation context, determination of difficult tests of system behavior is important as these tests would elucidate problematic system phenomena before these mistakes can engender problematic outcomes, e.g. loss of human life in autonomous cars, costly failures for airplane systems, etc. Our approach builds on existing, simulation-based work in the test and evaluation literature by offering a controller-agnostic test-synthesis procedure that provides a series of benchmark tests with which to determine controller reliability. To achieve this, our approach codifies the system objective as a timed reach-avoid specification. Then, by coupling control barrier functions with this class of specifications, we construct an instantaneous difficulty metric whose minimizer corresponds to the most difficult test at that system state. We use this instantaneous difficulty metric in a game-theoretic fashion, to produce an adversarial, time-varying test-synthesis procedure that does not require specific knowledge of the system's controller, but can still provably identify realizable and maximally difficult tests of system behavior. Finally, we develop this test-synthesis procedure for both continuous and discrete-time systems and showcase our test-synthesis procedure on simulated and hardware examples.


Item Type:Report or Paper (Discussion Paper)
Related URLs:
URLURL TypeDescription
http://arxiv.org/abs/2301.09622arXivDiscussion Paper
ORCID:
AuthorORCID
Akella, Prithvi0000-0003-4375-0015
Ahmadi, Mohamadreza0000-0003-1447-3012
Murray, Richard M.0000-0002-5785-7481
Ames, Aaron D.0000-0003-0848-3177
Additional Information:Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) We would like to thank Ryan Cosner and Wyatt Ubellacker for their tremendous help in running experiments. Additionally, we would like to thank Apurva Badithela and Josefine Graebner for their thought provoking discussions regarding problem formulation and potential solutions. Finally, Prithvi Akella was also supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, grant FA9550-19-1-0302.
Funders:
Funding AgencyGrant Number
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)FA9550-19-1-0302
Record Number:CaltechAUTHORS:20230316-204032253
Persistent URL:https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20230316-204032253
Usage Policy:No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided.
ID Code:120102
Collection:CaltechAUTHORS
Deposited By: George Porter
Deposited On:16 Mar 2023 23:10
Last Modified:16 Mar 2023 23:10

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