The verification and validation of industrial closed-loop automotive systems still remains a major challenge. The overall goal is to verify properties of the closed-loop combination of control software and physical plant. While current software model-checking techniques can be applied on a software component of the system, the end result is not very useful unless the interactions with the physical plant and other software components are captured. To this end, we present an industrial case study in which we combine requirement mining, software model-checking, and simulation-based verification to find issues in industrial automotive systems. Our methodology combines the the scalability of simulation-based verification of hybrid systems with the effectiveness of software model-checking at the unit level. We presents two case studies: one on a publicly available Abstract Fuel Control System benchmark and another on an actual production SiLS (Software in the Loop Simulator) benchmark. Together these case studies demonstrate the practicality of the proposed methodology.

Addresses generation of observation behaviors considering various combinations of robotic units. Toward the recognition of group robots, integration of sensing information among robots and autonomous positioning for acquiring better sensing information are required. In the paper, an architecture of recognition and integration based on mappings which are obtained through learning is proposed and a method of autonomous positioning for acquiring better sensing information is also proposed. The results of numerical simulation suggest that robots are capable of generating observation behaviors in order to decrease sensing errors.

The e-world, also known as the Internet, has added a new dimension to many of the traditional concepts in industrial applications and everyday life. The use of robots has dramatically expanded the potential of e-services. Individuals with particular expertise can perform highly accurate and fairly complicated tasks remotely via the Internet. This increase in the human reachability is faced by several obstacles. Reliable and efficient robot facilitated services via the Internet face several challenges. These range from human-computer interfacing and overcoming random time delay to task synchronization and human-robot interaction. These limitations intensify when many operators in many sites are involved. This paper provides new theoretical and experimental results on these challenges. Specifically, multisite cooperative control of an Internet based mobile manipulator is presented. The two main characteristics of this system are Internet based real-time closed loop control and coordinated operation. In addition, it is shown that despite random time delay the stability and synchronization of the system were achieved using event-based control.

We have studied a dynamically reconfigurable robot system which is a model of a multiple robot system. The purpose of our study is the realization and practical use of dynamic reconfiguration, especially in cooperation relations among robots according to task, environment and function. We consider space perception by multiple robots as the basic and important ability for robots to behave in environments. The space perception means the mapping from sensing information of each robot to a common task oriented observation coordinate system given by the designer. In the paper the mapping is acquired through learning using time series sensing information. Self-evaluation of reliability of observation for integration is also reported. We examined the proposed the method by using a task model in a two robots environment and the advantage of dynamic reconfiguration of the observation system is reported.

We assume that analyses of collective property is necessary for the establishment of swarm control theory. This paper deals an oscillation as one of the intrinsic collective properties of distributed autonomous robotic systems. The oscillation is a very important property, which influences the entire system performance. Factors which cause the oscillation include an information delay, fluctuation of the system, etc. We analyze the influence of such factors on the oscillation property. In addition, we examine the influence of oscillation on the system performance in terms of task sufficiency and efficiency. The cellular robotic system (CEBOT) is used as a model for the analysis.

Recently, the research of distributed autonomous robotic system (DARS) has been attracting research interest. The main advantage of DARS is flexibility, comparing with central controlled system. Cellular robotic system (CEBOT) is one of the distributed robotic system which consists of heterogeneous robots and they can change their function by means of structure reconfiguration of robotic units called "cell". In this paper, we consider distributed decision making where system is composed of large group and plural tasks and propose a method of decision making. We applied it to show adaptability of dynamically reconfigurable robotic system.

Distributed autonomous robotic system (DARS) has advantage in flexibility, comparing with central control system. The former researches of DARS mainly deal with the system which is composed of homogenous robots. Cellular robotic system (CEBOT) is one of the distributed robotic system which consists of heterogenous robots and they can change their function by means of connection or disconnection of robotic units called "cell". Functional reconfiguration increases the adaptability against the change of environment further, but it has specific problem concerned with the cost for changing its function. This paper deals with the behavior and the property of system that is composed of functionary reconfigurable robots and we focus on the effectivity of dynamic reconfiguration and the property of system, especially the trade-off between the effectivity of reconfiguration and the cost of reconfiguration through computer simulation by using a model of load transport in the production system.