Certifying Autonomous Systems

D-RisQ Ltd and Blue Bear Systems Research Ltd (BBSR) are collaborating on a project called ‘Certifying Autonomy’. The project will develop a maritime based system provided by BBSR that will be subject to validation from a design perspective using technologies developed by D-RisQ to meet the needs of autonomous systems certification. The validation technology is founded on automated formal methods which allow fully exhaustive exploration of design and checking it against textual requirements. The automation is required to reduce cost and enable design engineers regular access to the rigour imposed by the use of formal methods. Using commonly available design tools underpinned by appropriate formal semantics, we can define the boundary of the behaviour of an autonomous system and prove that it conforms to requirements under every normal circumstance. Where possible, we will also involve showing what happens under failure conditions of, for example, other automatic systems or unanticipated environmental inputs. We will explore the certification requirements and also the software implementation of the design and attempt to show how to meet certification requirements for autonomous, software based systems in not only the maritime domain, but ensure that the evidence can be applied to other more challenging domains such as civil aerospace