Pedro Sánchez Palma

Design of service robots

This article relates our experiences over the last 15 years in the development of robotic applications within the field of service robotics, using the techniques proposed by software engineering. The process began with domain engineering and reference architectures, moved on to component-oriented development, and currently centered on model-driven design. One of the key problems in software development for robotic systems is that the possibilities of reusing software in new applications are frequently limited. This means that we are forced over and over to solve the same problems starting practically from zero every time. The possible causes of this include the following: 1) robotics specialists normally concentrate more on developing algorithms and the way to solve concrete problems than on organizing the software; 2) lack of good standards for the development of robotic software and implementations of these standards; 3) the case studies conducted to demonstrate the viability of software engineering techniques traditionally deal with information management systems; and 4) the robotics community see software engineering not as a solution but as another problem that adds complexity to already complex problems. This research has helped to demonstrate the viability of using software engineering techniques in real industrial applications, albeit using academic tools that cannot readily be accepted by industry.

A systematic approach to developing safe tele-operated robots

Financiado parcialmente por los programas programs CICYT, ANCLA (TIC2003-07804-C05-02), y parte de DYNAMICA (DYNamic and Aspect-Oriented Modeling for Integrated Component-based Architectures)Real-Time Systems.- Hierarchical Scheduling with Ada 2005.- A Comparison of Ada and Real-Time JavaTM for Safety-Critical Applications.- POSIX Trace Based Behavioural Reflection.- Static Analysis.- Static Detection of Access Anomalies in Ada95.- One Million (LOC) and Counting: Static Analysis for Errors and Vulnerabilities in the Linux Kernel Source Code.- Bauhaus - A Tool Suite for Program Analysis and Reverse Engineering.- Verification.- SPARK Annotations Within Executable UML.- Runtime Verification of Java Programs for Scenario-Based Specifications.- Applications.- Secure Execution of Computations in Untrusted Hosts.- A Systematic Approach to Developing Safe Tele-operated Robots.- Towards Developing Multi-agent Systems in Ada.- Reliability.- A Software Reliability Model Based on a Geometric Sequence of Failure Rates.- Adaptive Random Testing Through Iterative Partitioning.- Run-Time Detection of Tasking Deadlocks in Real-Time Systems with the Ada 95 Annex of Real-Time Systems.- Compilers.- Abstract Interface Types in GNAT: Conversions, Discriminants, and C++.- Using Mathematics to Improve Ada Compiled Code.- Distributed Systems.- Replication-Aware Transactions: How to Roll a Transaction over Failures.- The Arbitrated Real-Time Protocol (AR-TP): A Ravenscar Compliant Communication Protocol for High-Integrity Distributed Systems.- Interchangeable Scheduling Policies in Real-Time Middleware for Distribution.