Software Engineering for Self-Adaptive Robotics: A Research Agenda

Self-adaptive robotic systems are designed to operate autonomously in dynamic and uncertain environments, requiring robust mechanisms to monitor, analyse, and adapt their behaviour in real-time. Unlike traditional robotic software, which follows predefined logic, self-adaptive robots leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning, and model-driven engineering to continuously adjust to changing operational conditions while ensuring reliability, safety, and performance. This paper presents a research agenda for software engineering in self-adaptive robotics, addressing critical challenges across two key dimensions: (1) the development phase, including requirements engineering, software design, co-simulation, and testing methodologies tailored to adaptive robotic systems, and (2) key enabling technologies, such as digital twins, model-driven engineering, and AI-driven adaptation, which facilitate runtime monitoring, fault detection, and automated decision-making. We discuss open research challenges, including verifying adaptive behaviours under uncertainty, balancing trade-offs between adaptability, performance, and safety, and integrating self-adaptation frameworks like MAPE-K. By providing a structured roadmap, this work aims to advance the software engineering foundations for self-adaptive robotic systems, ensuring they remain trustworthy, efficient, and capable of handling real-world complexities.

Model Checking and Verification of Synchronisation Properties of Cobot Welding

This paper describes use of model checking to verify synchronisation properties of an industrial welding system consisting of a cobot arm and an external turntable. The robots must move synchronously, but sometimes get out of synchronisation, giving rise to unsatisfactory weld qualities in problem areas, such as around corners. These mistakes are costly, since time is lost both in the robotic welding and in manual repairs needed to improve the weld. Verification of the synchronisation properties has shown that they are fulfilled as long as assumptions of correctness made about parts outside the scope of the model hold, indicating limitations in the hardware. These results have indicated the source of the problem, and motivated a re-calibration of the real-life system. This has drastically improved the welding results, and is a demonstration of how formal methods can be useful in an industrial setting.

From Formalised State Machines to Implementations of Robotic Controllers

Controllers for autonomous robotic systems can be specified using state machines. However, these are typically developed in an ad hoc manner without formal semantics, which makes it difficult to analyse the controller. Simulations are often used during the development, but a rigorous connection between the designed controller and the implementation is often overlooked. This paper presents a state-machine based notation, RoboChart, together with a tool to automatically create code from the state machines, establishing a rigorous connection between specification and implementation. In RoboChart, a robot's controller is specified either graphically or using a textual description language. The controller code for simulation is automatically generated through a direct mapping from the specification. We demonstrate our approach using two case studies (self-organized aggregation and swarm taxis) in swarm robotics. The simulations are presented using two different simulators showing the general applicability of our approach.