Managing safety and run-time adaptability in mission-critical Mobile Multi-robot system

The coming future will be pervaded by mobile multi-robot systems (MMRSs) that will facilitate tasks of everyday life and open new business and societal opportunities. However, these systems are exposed to various spheres of uncertainty, spanning from software and hardware variability of a single robot to the one associated with mission planning and execution in uncontrollable environments. Hence, MMRSs are facing a number challenges preventing them from being used in our everyday tasks: (i) robots need to be able to operate in unknown environments, (ii) robots will be required to collaborate with each other and even with humans to accomplish complex missions, and (iii) despite failures or malfunctions, robots should never injure people or create loss or severe damage to equipment property. Those challenges are getting targeted from various research perspectives, producing a fragmented research landscape. In this thesis, we investigate one of the open research questions in this domain, more specifically how to preserve safety while enabling mission completion for MMRSs. We consider that it is fundamental to have a clear separation between safety and mission concerns in order to manage the complexity of the missions in which MMRSs operate. Furthermore, we made an exploration on how to perform on-the-fly adaptation that will enable MMRSs to complete the defined mission while guaranteeing the preservation of safety constraints. We built our research upon a large base of literature of mobile multi-robot systems, self-adaptive systems, and model-driven engineering research. This thesis proposes a modeling framework for MMRSs that supports specification and execution of missions in MMRSs distinguishing between mission-related and safetyrelated adaptation mechanisms. It aims to improve the quality of how missions for MMRSs are specified and designed in terms of safety by reducing the intrinsic variability and complexity of todays MMRS missions and promotes reuse of safety-specific mechanisms across missions, projects, and organizations.