University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Autonomous system safety: Towards targeted and scalable approaches for validation and behaviour analysis

Du, Peter Boyu

Content Files
DU-DISSERTATION-2023.pdf

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121525

Description

Title
Autonomous system safety: Towards targeted and scalable approaches for validation and behaviour analysis
Author(s)
Du, Peter Boyu
Issue Date
2023-07-14
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Driggs-Campbell, Katherine
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Driggs-Campbell, Katherine
Committee Member(s)
  • Dullerud, Geir
  • Mitra, Sayan
  • Ornik, Melkior
  • Dong, Roy
Department of Study
Electrical & Computer Eng
Discipline
Electrical & Computer Engr
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
  • Autonomous Systems
  • Safety
  • Validation
  • Machine Learning
  • Robotics
Abstract
Autonomous systems are rapidly making their way into the physical domain, where they have to interact with human users in unstructured and safety-critical scenarios. The complexity of the jobs autonomy is tasked with is reflected in the diversity of components that make up the software and hardware stacks of autonomous systems. This diversity enables the performance we see, but also poses a challenge when trying to analyze the safety and behaviour properties of the systems — preventing the feasibility of a one-size-fits-all approach. In this dissertation, we approach the problem of safety analysis through the development of targeted and scalable methodologies that can cater to various forms of autonomous system design. In the first part of this work, we introduce methods for the validation of deterministic and stochastic white box models. Using reachability analysis, we develop a real-time safety monitor for automated systems interacting with human agents. The monitor incorporates human motion prediction with data driven reachability to provide a statement of safety assurance with formal guarantees in an online manner. In the stochastic setting, we develop safety analysis methods through examining the exit-time distribution of dynamics governed by stochastic differential equations (SDEs). Given some appropriately defined SDE, the moments of exit-times from a safe set are computed through an infinite dimensional convex optimization, where the constraints consist of linear and PSD matrices, resulting in a semidefinite program (SDP). In the latter sections, we present methods for the validation and behaviour analysis of black and semi-black box systems. In particular, the problem of failure search is posed as a sequential decision making process, enabling the use of efficient reinforcement learning (RL) methods to uncover the failure space of the autonomy under test. Using similar adaptive search techniques, we address the comparison of autonomous agent policies through contrastive summaries. The structured search of behaviour summaries demonstrates both computational efficiency and high interpretability.
Graduation Semester
2023-08
Type of Resource
Thesis
Handle URL
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121525
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2023 Peter Du

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