Domenico Pascarella

Dependability issues in visual-haptic interfaces

Dependability of a system is commonly referred to its reliability, its availability and its maintenability (RAM), but when this concept is applied to user interfaces there is no common agreement on what aspects of user-system interaction are related to a satisfactory RAM level for the whole system. In particular, when dealing with haptic systems, interface dependability may become a crucial issue in medical and in military domains when life-critical systems are to be manipulated or where costly remote control operations are to be performed, like in industrial processes control or in aerospace/automotive engineering and manufacturing. This paper discusses the role of dependability in haptic user interfaces, aiming to the definition of a framework for the assessment of the usability and dependability properties of haptic systems and their possible correlations. The research is based on the analysis of a visual-haptic-based simulator targeted to maintenance activity training for aerospace industry which is taken as a case study. As a result, we propose a novel framework able to collect and then process relevant interaction data during the execution of haptic tasks, enabling to analyze dependability vs. usability correlations.

Autonomic Agents for Real Time UAV Mission Planning

This paper investigates agent-based modelling and design of a real time mission planning module for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Agents can act on behalf of remote human operators, who impose mission objectives, performing autonomous or supervised behaviours. The planning module is in charge to deliberate the strategic tasks to achieve mission objectives and to satisfy environment constraints (area of operations, aircraft performances, etc.). We define a multi-objective model for implementing a goal-directed decision making support to the planning module. A formal model is used to infer from requirements real time constraints, by which mission planning is dynamically scheduled. Preliminary development and performance evaluation using embedded devices are discussed.

Optimal Configuration Model of a Fleet of Unmanned Vehicles for Interoperable Missions

It is largely recognized that many missions may be easily performed by unmanned vehicles both in military and in civil domain. Literature shows a large inventory of their applications with operational and logistical challenges. Comparing different types of missions, a multi-vehicle approach is able to guarantee better performances and minimum costs, as long as they are coordinated. Thus, the problem to guarantee the better platform configuration to perform the mission becomes architecting the best fleet. This paper proposes an approach to identify the best fleet to perform an envelope of missions, by transforming the architecting activity in an optimization problem. A classification of unmanned vehicles missions and the formal definition of the problem are proposed.

A Semantic Driven Approach for Consistency Verification Between Requirements and FMEA

Consistency within the system life cycle is difficult to guarantee, due to the cross of different skills and requirements, often expressed by means of different languages. In particular, in safety-critical systems consistency between software requirements and safety analysis requires checks to guarantee that safety engineer needs are feasible and implemented by the system. Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a systematic technique to analyze the failure modes of components, evaluating their impact and their mitigation actions, which are procedures to be implemented by operators or by the system itself (usually by the software). Although the actual efforts to centralize system information in a structured way, safety analysis is not tied in a structured manner to other systems, in particular to software. This paper proposes an automatic approach to check consistency between FMEA and software requirements with a bit effort of formalization. The approach models FMEA and software requirements with Resource Description Framework (RDF) triplets and checks their consistency on the basis of consistency rules.

A Parallel and a Distributed Implementation of the Core Paths Graph Algorithm

The problem of generating optimal flight trajectories in the presence of no-fly zones and/or obstacles is computationally expensive. It is usually solved offline, at least for those parts which cannot satisfy real time constraints. Here we investigate the exploitation of two parallel programming techniques to reduce the lead time. The former employs some parallelization techniques formulti-core and/or multi-processor platforms. The latter is targeted to a distributed fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Here the statement of the problem and preliminary development are discussed. A two-dimensional scenario is analysed by way of example to show the applicability and the effectiveness of the approaches.

A SVM-based detection approach for GPS spoofing attacks to UAV

Today, the necessity of strong cyber security measures is self-evident. The proliferation of cyber attacks is causing increasing damage to companies, governments and individuals and it is not just the number of cyber security attacks that is increasing: the severity of these attacks is on the rise as well. In particular, aviation systems and Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems are of highest importance in terms of safety and security. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to the detection of Global Positioning System (GPS) spoofing attack to Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based on the analysis of state estimation using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) as a tool for the anomaly detection.

Risk Assessment to Support Liability Allocation Performed by the System GUI Analysis

Main productive, administrative and social organizations represent interconnected socio-technical systems, namely, complex systems constituted by technical artifacts, social artifacts and humans. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is a system interaction approach which allows different actors (human, software, …) of involved organizations to interact with each other by manipulating graphical objects. Often, these complex systems require sophisticated interfaces characterized by dynamic components which can provide information about system behavior. In this paper we present a research in progress, related to the integration of a paradigm borrowed by risk theory, within a tool for the evaluation of software systems through the analysis of visual components of its interface. The idea is to support organizations to define and properly allocate liability among system actors in order to identify recurring errors to possibly evaluate a potential reengineering of the system.

An Analytical Approach for Optimal Resilience Management in Future ATM Systems

The air transportation system is a large-scale socio-technical system and its modelling approaches emphasize the sociological dimension due to the increasing importance of collaborative decision-making processes in the future Air Traffic Management (ATM). Resilience is assuming an increasing importance within ATM, but it is difficult or even impossible to establish the resilience role in realizing the targeted performance levels of an air traffic system. This paper proposes a systematic methodology for resilience management in ATM. It introduces an analytical definition of a resilience metric for an ATM system and formally states the resilience management problem as an optimization problem. Moreover, it describes a strategy for the problem solution and provides some preliminary results in order to quantitatively prove the validity of the methodology.

Simulation Approach to the Resilience Engineering Assessment of the ATM System in Crisis Scenarios

THE increase of traffic density and typology of airspace users and aircraft operations increases the complexity of the current Air Traffic Management system and of its performance, and may lead to significant performance reductions in the presence of unexpected events. After the occurrence of an unexpected event, the analysis of Key Performance Area, such as capacity, efficiency, etc., and shortfalls in their related Key Performance Indicators at local, regional or network wide levels were made selecting the alternative scenarios and comparing them to the planned situation with normal operations. This relies on the working relationship and processes between air transportation network managers and operational Stakeholders especially during the anticipating, reacting and management phases strongly depending on their reactions to mitigate the impact on the system, and to optimize resilience in sector groups based upon the current Air Traffic Management activities. This paper describes an approach to resilience analysis in crisis scenarios, starting from the concept of Resilience Engineering and related metrics in Air Traffic Management system adopted in SESAR WPE2.21 SAFECORAM (Sharing of Authority in Failure/Emergency Condition for Resilience of Air traffic Management) project.

Modeling Approach for Resilience Engineering of the Future ATM System

The Air Traffic Management system is rapidly growing in complexity. In order to limit potential performance reductions of the system, several international research programs were started to develop new operational concepts in order to reorganize and redesign the air traffic management system in a more efficient way. An evaluation of the performance of these new operational concepts may be stated in terms of system resilience. Resilience is an approach to the analysis of the capabilities and the behavior of complex systems under nonnominal conditions. The purpose of this paper is to present the approach proposed in the SESAR JU E2.21 SAFECORAM project for the definition of a quantitative methodology for resilience evaluation of the future ATM system based on the development of a concept for task re-allocation among remaining available resources (humans and/or machines) in offnominal conditions.