A Calculus for Software Engineering of Mobile and Autonomous Robots
Lead Research Organisation:
University of York
Department Name: Computer Science
Abstract
The basic mathematical principles that guide the engineering of software are, by far and large, known. The techniques whose notations and procedures are justified by these principles are called formal methods, and it is just relatively recently that main players in industry like Microsoft have started using formal methods to improve the quality of their products. What is routine in many engineering disciplines is just now becoming feasible for software developers.
The practical use of formal methods in many specific areas of application is still an open challenge that is being tackled by scientists and engineers worldwide. In RoboCalc, we face this challenge in the exciting area of development of controller software for mobile and autonomous robots. Our focus is on the development of formal methods with applicability in this industry.
This requires pushing the boundaries of the state of the art in two respects. Firstly, we have to contribute for the further development of the foundations of software engineering. We need to cope with models of the physical environment in which robots operate; the environment has a direct impact on the behaviour of the controller. We also need to cope with timed and probabilistic behaviours, which are exhibited both by the environment and the controllers themselves. Finally, we need to characterise and understand the languages and design techniques used for simulation and programming of robot controllers. All this needs to be considered in an integrated and consistent way. The second important aspect of the work to be carried out is the design of procedures and tools to support the automated application of the novel techniques; this ensures scalability and usability.
Our vision is a 21st-century toolbox for robot-controller developers. In this toolbox, a developer can find unambiguous diagrammatic notations to specify models for the environment, the robotic platform, and the controller. For commonly used environments and robotic platforms, the toolbox includes a range of ready-made models. Because these models are precise, there is no scope for misunderstanding and, most importantly, the toolbox includes techniques that allow analysis of desirable properties of the models: deadlock freedom, speed limits, and so on.
A technique for validation that robot controller developers favour nowadays is simulation. In the 21st-century toolbox, there are tools for automatic generation of these simulations. The ingenuity of the developer is now focussed in the optimisation of the simulation and of the associated deployed code. These optimisations are often needed, and so the toolbox also includes facilities to ensure that changes maintain compliance with the models previously developed. Moreover, because the languages used for simulation and programming are high-level, the results are tool independent, and can be deployed in a variety of robotic platforms.
All this is in stark contrast with current practice. Nowadays, typically, high-level models are either informal or not really of a high level, as they are described in a programming language. With these models, facilities for analysis is limited. Simulations and deployments evolve independently, and so any reasoning has to be at the (tool and hardware dependent) code level.
With the 21st-century toolbox, the costly cycles of iterations of design and testing, with problems found very late, even just at deployment time, are reduced. Moreover, the developer can demonstrate that the controller produced satisfies essential properties established during modelling. Software for mobile and autonomous robot is cheaper and more reliable.
The 21st-century toolbox has been made possible because the calculus for the engineering discipline for robot-controller software is understood and put into practice. This is our goal in RoboCalc.
The practical use of formal methods in many specific areas of application is still an open challenge that is being tackled by scientists and engineers worldwide. In RoboCalc, we face this challenge in the exciting area of development of controller software for mobile and autonomous robots. Our focus is on the development of formal methods with applicability in this industry.
This requires pushing the boundaries of the state of the art in two respects. Firstly, we have to contribute for the further development of the foundations of software engineering. We need to cope with models of the physical environment in which robots operate; the environment has a direct impact on the behaviour of the controller. We also need to cope with timed and probabilistic behaviours, which are exhibited both by the environment and the controllers themselves. Finally, we need to characterise and understand the languages and design techniques used for simulation and programming of robot controllers. All this needs to be considered in an integrated and consistent way. The second important aspect of the work to be carried out is the design of procedures and tools to support the automated application of the novel techniques; this ensures scalability and usability.
Our vision is a 21st-century toolbox for robot-controller developers. In this toolbox, a developer can find unambiguous diagrammatic notations to specify models for the environment, the robotic platform, and the controller. For commonly used environments and robotic platforms, the toolbox includes a range of ready-made models. Because these models are precise, there is no scope for misunderstanding and, most importantly, the toolbox includes techniques that allow analysis of desirable properties of the models: deadlock freedom, speed limits, and so on.
A technique for validation that robot controller developers favour nowadays is simulation. In the 21st-century toolbox, there are tools for automatic generation of these simulations. The ingenuity of the developer is now focussed in the optimisation of the simulation and of the associated deployed code. These optimisations are often needed, and so the toolbox also includes facilities to ensure that changes maintain compliance with the models previously developed. Moreover, because the languages used for simulation and programming are high-level, the results are tool independent, and can be deployed in a variety of robotic platforms.
All this is in stark contrast with current practice. Nowadays, typically, high-level models are either informal or not really of a high level, as they are described in a programming language. With these models, facilities for analysis is limited. Simulations and deployments evolve independently, and so any reasoning has to be at the (tool and hardware dependent) code level.
With the 21st-century toolbox, the costly cycles of iterations of design and testing, with problems found very late, even just at deployment time, are reduced. Moreover, the developer can demonstrate that the controller produced satisfies essential properties established during modelling. Software for mobile and autonomous robot is cheaper and more reliable.
The 21st-century toolbox has been made possible because the calculus for the engineering discipline for robot-controller software is understood and put into practice. This is our goal in RoboCalc.
Planned Impact
The potential impact of the work we propose is far reaching, given the large number of prospective and current applications of mobile and autonomous robots. Benefit to society is going to be realised, in the longer term, via the increased safety and lower cost of the robotic systems developed with the use of our techniques. For example, autonomous vehicles can become widespread, with uses for entertainment, surveillance, defense and so on, and industrial robots can become more interactive and cooperate with humans.
In more detail, we note the following non-academic beneficiaries:
* general public, who will have another tool to understand the abstract concepts of Computer Science and Software Engineering;
* developers, who will have modern tools to tackle the difficult problem of programming robot controllers;
* certifiers, who will have techniques for program verification, and can reasonably request from developers the artefacts that provide evidence of properties of the robot controllers, with traceability provided to link designs, simulations, and deployments;
We expect the impact on the general public to be achieved during the lifetime of the project and beyond, on developers at the end of the project, and on certifiers in the longer term.
We note that our approach is based on state machines, a notation well accepted by engineers. In addition, we eagerly pursue automation. This addresses scalability, but also accessibility of techniques and results. Impact is, in this way, improved, from the point of view of developers and certifiers.
The multitude of applications of robots that can become economically viable mean that, indirectly, our results can support cultural enrichment (with robots used in museums, galleries and libraries), quality of life (with robots used in domestic cleaning activities), health (with robots used in home-care setups), environmental protection (with robots used for pollution monitoring). On a more technical vein, our results can provide evidence that safety cases can be made for mobile autonomous robots. This can influence governmental and industrial guidelines both in the UK and internationally. In the case of businesses involved in robot development themselves, our results will generate the knowledge that they can use to significantly improve their design, validation, and verification skills. With the growth expected in the market, the impact will be significant, and attract and optimise investment.
While some of our research assistants will concentrate on the scientific foundations of the engineering of robot-controller software, some will have just the right skills to work in the modern robotics industry. Undergraduate and MSc students will also benefit from our results, since our demonstrators and examples can be incorporated in modules on software engineering and robotics.
According to market reports, the UK software industry is on the rise and is presently the second largest market by value in Europe. The UK has expertise in the development of safety-critical software in a wide number of domains. The state-of-the-art technology that we will developed will further enhance this expertise, and help us to maintain significant international leadership. The UK has clear international leadership in formal methods. This project will help us maintain our position. We will ensure our continued presence in a very important section of the society.
In more detail, we note the following non-academic beneficiaries:
* general public, who will have another tool to understand the abstract concepts of Computer Science and Software Engineering;
* developers, who will have modern tools to tackle the difficult problem of programming robot controllers;
* certifiers, who will have techniques for program verification, and can reasonably request from developers the artefacts that provide evidence of properties of the robot controllers, with traceability provided to link designs, simulations, and deployments;
We expect the impact on the general public to be achieved during the lifetime of the project and beyond, on developers at the end of the project, and on certifiers in the longer term.
We note that our approach is based on state machines, a notation well accepted by engineers. In addition, we eagerly pursue automation. This addresses scalability, but also accessibility of techniques and results. Impact is, in this way, improved, from the point of view of developers and certifiers.
The multitude of applications of robots that can become economically viable mean that, indirectly, our results can support cultural enrichment (with robots used in museums, galleries and libraries), quality of life (with robots used in domestic cleaning activities), health (with robots used in home-care setups), environmental protection (with robots used for pollution monitoring). On a more technical vein, our results can provide evidence that safety cases can be made for mobile autonomous robots. This can influence governmental and industrial guidelines both in the UK and internationally. In the case of businesses involved in robot development themselves, our results will generate the knowledge that they can use to significantly improve their design, validation, and verification skills. With the growth expected in the market, the impact will be significant, and attract and optimise investment.
While some of our research assistants will concentrate on the scientific foundations of the engineering of robot-controller software, some will have just the right skills to work in the modern robotics industry. Undergraduate and MSc students will also benefit from our results, since our demonstrators and examples can be incorporated in modules on software engineering and robotics.
According to market reports, the UK software industry is on the rise and is presently the second largest market by value in Europe. The UK has expertise in the development of safety-critical software in a wide number of domains. The state-of-the-art technology that we will developed will further enhance this expertise, and help us to maintain significant international leadership. The UK has clear international leadership in formal methods. This project will help us maintain our position. We will ensure our continued presence in a very important section of the society.
Organisations
- University of York (Lead Research Organisation)
- University of Surrey (Collaboration)
- Technical University of Munich (Collaboration)
- Thales Group (Collaboration)
- Federal University of Pernambuco (Collaboration)
- Transport Systems Catapult (Collaboration)
- Microsoft Research (Collaboration)
- UFPE (Collaboration)
- University of Bremen (Collaboration)
- Seoul National University (Collaboration)
- Fudan University (Collaboration)
- Southwest University (Collaboration)
- Universidade de São Paulo (Collaboration)
- Aarhus University (Collaboration)
- D-RisQ (Collaboration)
- Technical University Berlin (Collaboration)
- Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) (Collaboration)
- Lancaster University (Collaboration)
- Newcastle University (Collaboration)
- Galois, Inc. (Collaboration)
- Trinity College Dublin (Collaboration)
- Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) (Collaboration)
- Simomics Ltd (Collaboration)
- Praxis Systems Ltd (Collaboration)
- University of Agder (Collaboration)
- ULSTER UNIVERSITY (Collaboration)
- Altran (Collaboration)
- East China Normal University (ECNU) (Collaboration)
- ABB Group (Collaboration)
- Indian Institute of Science Bangalore (Collaboration)
- University of Toronto (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF YORK (Collaboration)
- KING'S COLLEGE LONDON (Collaboration)
Publications
Carvalho G
(2016)
Modelling timed reactive systems from natural-language requirements
in Formal Aspects of Computing
Kulik T
(2022)
A Survey of Practical Formal Methods for Security
in Formal Aspects of Computing
Chen X
(2021)
Editorial
in Formal Aspects of Computing
Barnett W
(2022)
Architectural modelling for robotics: RoboArch and the CorteX example.
in Frontiers in robotics and AI
Alberto A
(2017)
Formal mutation testing for
in Information and Software Technology
Conserva Filho M
(2018)
Compositional and local livelock analysis for CSP
in Information Processing Letters
Foster S
(2018)
Unifying theories of time with generalised reactive processes
in Information Processing Letters
Ye K
(2015)
Model checking of state-rich formalism by linking to $$CSP\,\Vert \,B$$ C S P ? B
in International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer
Foster S
(2021)
Integration of Formal Proof into Unified Assurance Cases - With Isabelle/SACM
in ITNOW
Foster S
(2021)
Automated verification of reactive and concurrent programs by calculation
in Journal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming
| Description | The goal of our work is the development of a 21st-century toolbox for robot-controller developers. The development of this toolbox and its scientific underpinnings are well under way. We already have a framework for with unambiguous diagrammatic notations to specify models for the robotic platform and the controller. Because these models are precise, there is no scope for misunderstanding and, most importantly, the toolbox includes techniques that allow analysis of desirable properties of the models: deadlock freedom, speed limits, and so on. We cater for both timed and probabilistic properties. A technique for validation that robot controller developers favour nowadays is simulation. In the 21st-century toolbox, there are tools for automatic generation of these simulations. The ingenuity of the developer is now focussed in the optimisation of the simulation and of the associated deployed code. Since the languages used for simulation are high-level, the results are tool independent, and can be deployed in a variety of robotic platforms. Because of the automation, we have usability and scalability. |
| Exploitation Route | The outcomes of this project are being taken forward in a variety of pathways to impact: additional funding attracted (from EPSRC and RAEng), and take up in industry is under way. Industrial interest nationally and internationally is leading to technology transfer activities funded by industry. |
| Sectors | Aerospace Defence and Marine Agriculture Food and Drink Chemicals Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Electronics Environment Healthcare Leisure Activities including Sports Recreation and Tourism Manufacturing including Industrial Biotechology Culture Heritage Museums and Collections Retail Transport |
| URL | https://robostar.cs.york.ac.uk/ |
| Description | We have participated in public engagement activities to disseminate the work. We have reached out to schools, the York Festival of Ideas, and the Pint of Science, contribute to RAEng public engagement events, and recorded vidoes and podcasts. For an audience more focused on science and engineering, but still generalist, we have written popular articles, given webinars, and published podcasts. We have also developed new material for YorkTalks (https://www.york.ac.uk/research/events/yorktalks/). We have material ready and are developing more material to engage in this form of activity. As a result, we have also trained the Research Assistants in dealing with the public. We are engaging with industry nationally and internationally to train human resources and support the development of new tools. Colleagues in industry are also leading the effort. T. Lecomte, D. Déharbe, P. Fournier, M. Oliveira: The CLEARSY safety platform: 5 years of research, development and deployment. Sci. Comput. Program. 199, 102524 (2020). reports on efforts by industry to provide support for use of RoboTest technology in their safety platform. Another current effort is providing support for implementation of RoboTest results in a prized testing tool adopted by major players in the cyber-physical industry. An incoming Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowship is pursuing technology transfer by extending the result to deal with humans in the loop. Colleagues in academia are also building on our work to develop their own research independently. An example is reported in W. Lindoso, S. C. Nogueira, R. Domingues, L. Lima: Visual Specification of Properties for Robotic Designs. In: S. Campos and M. Minea (eds.) Formal Methods: Foundations and Applications - 24th Brazilian Symposium, SBMF 2021, Virtual Event, December 6-10, 2021, Proceedings. pp. 34-52. Springer (2021). We are working on a Prosperity Partnership, and establishing a industry-funded CDT. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2024 |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Transport |
| Impact Types | Cultural Societal Economic |
| Description | 1000 Talents Programme |
| Amount | ¥1,950,000 (CNY) |
| Organisation | National Science Foundation China |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | China |
| Start | 11/2019 |
| End | 11/2024 |
| Description | Aarhus University Centre for Digital Twins |
| Amount | 970,392 kr. (DKK) |
| Funding ID | 2018-019 |
| Organisation | Aarhus University |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | Denmark |
| Start | 11/2019 |
| End | 11/2024 |
| Description | Chair in Emerging Technologies |
| Amount | £1,300,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Royal Academy of Engineering |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2018 |
| End | 02/2028 |
| Description | Chair in Emerging Technologies Top-Up Award 1 |
| Amount | £55,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | CiET1819\TUA\11 |
| Organisation | Royal Academy of Engineering |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2019 |
| End | 02/2020 |
| Description | Chair in Emerging Technologies Top-Up Award 2 |
| Amount | £55,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | CiET1920\TUA\13 |
| Organisation | Royal Academy of Engineering |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2020 |
| End | 02/2021 |
| Description | Chair in Emerging Technologies Top-Up Award 4 |
| Amount | £55,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | CiET1920\TUA\2021\4 |
| Organisation | Royal Academy of Engineering |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2021 |
| End | 02/2022 |
| Description | CyPhyAssure: Compositional Safety Assurance for Cyber-Physical Systems |
| Amount | £562,549 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/S001190/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2018 |
| End | 07/2021 |
| Description | Distinguished Visiting Fellow DVF (Round 4) |
| Amount | £2,865 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | DVF1516\4\23 |
| Organisation | Royal Academy of Engineering |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2016 |
| End | 07/2016 |
| Description | EPSRC Standard Grant |
| Amount | £1,776,973 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/R025479/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2018 |
| End | 03/2023 |
| Description | EU Horizon 2020 |
| Amount | € 900,000 (EUR) |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 01/2015 |
| End | 12/2017 |
| Description | Hazardous Scene Assessment |
| Amount | £78,500 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
| Department | Centre for Defence Enterprise |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2017 |
| End | 06/2017 |
| Description | Horizon 2020 |
| Amount | € 7,000,000 (EUR) |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 01/2015 |
| End | 12/2017 |
| Description | Human-Robot Collaboration in RoboStar |
| Amount | £150,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Thales Group |
| Sector | Private |
| Country | France |
| Start | 09/2021 |
| End | 09/2025 |
| Description | Mini Centre for Doctoral Training. Albert: Autonomous Robotic Systems for Laboratory Experiments |
| Amount | £1,000,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of York |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2023 |
| End | 12/2027 |
| Description | Newton Mobility Grant |
| Amount | £12,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | The Royal Society |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 12/2015 |
| End | 11/2017 |
| Description | Newton Research Collaboration Programme |
| Amount | £23,374 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | NRCP1617/6/164 |
| Organisation | Royal Academy of Engineering |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2017 |
| End | 12/2017 |
| Description | Newton Research Collaboration Programme |
| Amount | £23,105 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | NRCP1617/5/68 |
| Organisation | Royal Academy of Engineering |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2016 |
| End | 10/2017 |
| Description | RAEng Brazil 1 |
| Amount | £24,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | NRCP1617/5/68 |
| Organisation | Royal Academy of Engineering |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2016 |
| End | 07/2017 |
| Description | RAEng Brazil 2 |
| Amount | £24,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | NRCP1617/6/164 |
| Organisation | Royal Academy of Engineering |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2017 |
| End | 01/2018 |
| Description | Regional Engagement Awards |
| Amount | £75,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | REA1920\3\20 |
| Organisation | Royal Academy of Engineering |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2020 |
| End | 12/2023 |
| Description | Robotic Safe Adaptation In unprecedented Situations |
| Amount | € 6,883,233 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | Grant agreement ID: 101133807 |
| Organisation | European Commission H2020 |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | Belgium |
| Start | 01/2024 |
| End | 12/2027 |
| Description | TSB Open Call |
| Amount | £22,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Innovate UK |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2016 |
| End | 03/2017 |
| Description | UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Resilience |
| Amount | £3,063,678 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/V026747/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2020 |
| End | 04/2024 |
| Description | UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Verifiability |
| Amount | £2,923,652 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/V026801/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2020 |
| End | 04/2021 |
| Description | Aarhus University Centre for Digital Twins |
| Organisation | Aarhus University |
| Department | School of Engineering |
| Country | Denmark |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Research collaboration with Professor Peter Gorm Larsen at Aarhus University's Centre for Digital Twins. Appointment as Adjunct Professor with support for activities, including regular visits. Appointment of Larsen as Visiting Professor at York. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Collaboration on research papers and research proposals. Joint supervision of students at Aarhus. |
| Impact | Collaboration with Cláudio Gomes on a paper: Uncertainty quantification and runtime monitoring using environment-aware digital twins. Paper accepted for ISoLA conference 2020, but delayed to 2021 because of pandemic. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Adjunct Professorship, Southwest University, Chongqing, China |
| Organisation | Southwest University |
| Country | China |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Collaboration on a joint research project on human-cyber-physical systems. Appointment as Adjunct professor at Southwest University. Supervision of joint research students at Southwest University. Personal research fund for JCPW at Southwest University. Collaboration on the verification of neural networks. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Joint research papers and research proposals. Proposed joint research laboratory. Joint direction of FM4AI research programme. |
| Impact | Published a paper: Hengjun Zhao, Xia Zeng, Taolue Chen, Zhiming Liu, Jim Woodcock: Learning Safe Neural Network Controllers with Barrier Certificates. SETTA 2020: 177-185 |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Applicable Formal Methods |
| Organisation | Aarhus University |
| Country | Denmark |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise in theory and practice of formal methods. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise in theory and practice of formal methods. |
| Impact | Publications: 1. Mario Gleirscher, Simon Foster, Jim Woodcock: New Opportunities for Integrated Formal Methods. ACM Comput. Surv. 52(6): 117:1-117:36 (2020) 2. Mario Gleirscher, Jaco van de Pol, Jim Woodcock: A Manifesto for Applicable Formal Methods. CoRR abs/2112.12758 (2021) 3. Mario Gleirscher, Jaco van de Pol, Jim Woodcock: Proceedings First Workshop on Applicable Formal Methods, AppFM@FM 2021, virtual, 23rd November 2021. EPTCS 349, 2021 Workshop: First Workshop on Applicable Formal Methods, AppFM@FM 2021 |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Applicable Formal Methods |
| Organisation | University of Bremen |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise in theory and practice of formal methods. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise in theory and practice of formal methods. |
| Impact | Publications: 1. Mario Gleirscher, Simon Foster, Jim Woodcock: New Opportunities for Integrated Formal Methods. ACM Comput. Surv. 52(6): 117:1-117:36 (2020) 2. Mario Gleirscher, Jaco van de Pol, Jim Woodcock: A Manifesto for Applicable Formal Methods. CoRR abs/2112.12758 (2021) 3. Mario Gleirscher, Jaco van de Pol, Jim Woodcock: Proceedings First Workshop on Applicable Formal Methods, AppFM@FM 2021, virtual, 23rd November 2021. EPTCS 349, 2021 Workshop: First Workshop on Applicable Formal Methods, AppFM@FM 2021 |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Butterfield TCD UTP |
| Organisation | Trinity College Dublin |
| Department | School of Computer Science and Statistics |
| Country | Ireland |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | I have been collaborating with Andrew Butterfield since 2002 on Unifying Theories of Programming (UTP) and the formal semantics of of real-time, hybrid, and probabilistic systems. We meet regularly (at least twice a year) and have published 10 joint papers (five journal and five refereed conference papers). I have made contributions in foundations of UTP (including donating extensive course materials) and in applications to systems of systems and robotic and autonomous systems. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Andrew Butterfield at TCD has made contributions to understanding hardware/software co-design and real-time and probabilistic systems. He contributed a strong background in functional programming. |
| Impact | Outputs: DOIs: 10.1007/978-3-319-47166-2_26 10.1016/j.scico.2008.09.014 10.1109/TASE.2009.57 10.1109/ICECCS.2008.35 10.1109/ICECCS.2007.23 10.1007/978-3-540-73210-5_5 10.1016/j.entcs.2006.04.026 10.1007/s10009-004-0181-6 10.1016/S1571-0661(04)80821-1 10.1016/S1571-0661(04)80762-X The collaboration is multi-disciplinary, involving computer science and electronic engineering. |
| Description | CSP-based testing |
| Organisation | University of Bremen |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise in CSP and its semantics |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise on testing and automation |
| Impact | J. Peleska, W. l. Huang, and A. L. C. Cavalcanti. Finite complete suites for CSP refinement testing. Science of Computer Programming, 179:1 -- 23, 2019. A. L. C. Cavalcanti, W.-L. Huang, J. Peleska, and J. C. P. Woodcock. CSP and Kripke Structures. In M. Leucker, C. Rueda, and F. D. Valencia, editors, Theoretical Aspects of Computing, pages 505--523. Springer, 2015. |
| Start Year | 2015 |
| Description | Chemical Agent Detection |
| Organisation | Ulster University |
| Department | Faculty of Life and Health Sciences |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Development of a hardware demonstrator of a neural network based control system for chemical agent detection. Using the tools developed in RoboCalc we will explore the limits of what is possible to model with respect to a complex controller based on neural networks. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They are experts in the development of hardware based neural networks. |
| Impact | Funded grant from the CDE (phase 1 development of prototype) |
| Start Year | 2016 |
| Description | Circus foundations and Isabelle/UTP |
| Organisation | Galois, Inc. |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | This is a collaboration that has just started. We are going to provide expertise on the techniques. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They are taking a lead to mechanise the techniques and apply them on Rigorous Digital Engineering. |
| Impact | Development of theories and techniques, and their application to industrial case studies. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Collaboration on RoboSim language: semantics, verification, examples, tools. |
| Organisation | Federal University of Pernambuco |
| Country | Brazil |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Training on robotics |
| Collaborator Contribution | Partnership in the design and implementation of RoboSim |
| Impact | Joint papers. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Collaboration on RoboWorld language: syntax, semantics, examples, tools |
| Organisation | UFPE |
| Country | Brazil |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise on robotics, the RoboChart language, and CyPhyCircus semantics |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise on controlled natural languages, partnership in the design and implementation of RoboWorld |
| Impact | Development of the RoboWorld language and a prototype tool for it, journal paper under review |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Collaboration on Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic and Cultural (SLEEC) aspects of autonomous agents with the TAS Resilience Node |
| Organisation | University of York |
| Department | Department of Computer Science |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise on the formal semantics of RoboChart and definition of conformance relation for checking satisfaction of design models against SLEEC rules. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise on Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic and Cultural (SLEEC) aspects for Autonomous Agents. |
| Impact | Joint work under way and contributing to the writing of joint journal paper. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Collaboration on Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic, and Cultural Requirements for Service Robots |
| Organisation | University of Toronto |
| Country | Canada |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise on modelling, formalisation, validation, and verification of these requirements. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Alternative mathematical models, and validation approaches. |
| Impact | We have published two papers together and given a tutorial. |
| Start Year | 2023 |
| Description | Collaboration with Fudan University |
| Organisation | Fudan University |
| Country | China |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We have begun very early work on the application of the tools developed in the project to case studies being undertaken by researchers at Fudan. We visited once in 2018 (Sept) and plan to visit again later this year and work with MSc and PhD students in more detail. We have provided insight into the use of the tools and suggested possible application areas. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They have provided outline case studies for us to examine, so that we can focus work for 2019. |
| Impact | At this stage, outcomes are limited, expect the development of a plan for 2019 work. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Collaboration with Univesity of Agder, NMBU, and ABB Robotics |
| Organisation | ABB Group |
| Country | Switzerland |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | We have provided insight into the use of tools and techniques for modelling and verification of a High-Voltage Controller (HVC) robotic system. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They have brought a case study of a High-Voltage Controller, which is at the core of a painting robot developed at ABB Robotics. They have used RoboChart and RoboTool to model the software controller and perform formal verification of safety properties. Work is ongoing towards verification including a model of the physical robotic platform. |
| Impact | * A case study, including two models. * Improvements to the implementation of the semantics of RoboChart for model-checking. * A publication: Murray Y, Anisi D, Sirevåg M, Ribeiro P, Hagag R. (2020). Safety Assurance of a High Voltage Controller for an Industrial Robotic System. Formal Methods: Foundations and Applications - 23rd Brazilian Symposium, SBMF 2020, Ouro Preto, Brazil, November 25-27, 2020, Proceedings. (pp. 45-63). |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Collaboration with Univesity of Agder, NMBU, and ABB Robotics |
| Organisation | Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) |
| Country | Norway |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We have provided insight into the use of tools and techniques for modelling and verification of a High-Voltage Controller (HVC) robotic system. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They have brought a case study of a High-Voltage Controller, which is at the core of a painting robot developed at ABB Robotics. They have used RoboChart and RoboTool to model the software controller and perform formal verification of safety properties. Work is ongoing towards verification including a model of the physical robotic platform. |
| Impact | * A case study, including two models. * Improvements to the implementation of the semantics of RoboChart for model-checking. * A publication: Murray Y, Anisi D, Sirevåg M, Ribeiro P, Hagag R. (2020). Safety Assurance of a High Voltage Controller for an Industrial Robotic System. Formal Methods: Foundations and Applications - 23rd Brazilian Symposium, SBMF 2020, Ouro Preto, Brazil, November 25-27, 2020, Proceedings. (pp. 45-63). |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Collaboration with Univesity of Agder, NMBU, and ABB Robotics |
| Organisation | University of Agder |
| Country | Norway |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We have provided insight into the use of tools and techniques for modelling and verification of a High-Voltage Controller (HVC) robotic system. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They have brought a case study of a High-Voltage Controller, which is at the core of a painting robot developed at ABB Robotics. They have used RoboChart and RoboTool to model the software controller and perform formal verification of safety properties. Work is ongoing towards verification including a model of the physical robotic platform. |
| Impact | * A case study, including two models. * Improvements to the implementation of the semantics of RoboChart for model-checking. * A publication: Murray Y, Anisi D, Sirevåg M, Ribeiro P, Hagag R. (2020). Safety Assurance of a High Voltage Controller for an Industrial Robotic System. Formal Methods: Foundations and Applications - 23rd Brazilian Symposium, SBMF 2020, Ouro Preto, Brazil, November 25-27, 2020, Proceedings. (pp. 45-63). |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | D'Souza IISc Verification |
| Organisation | Indian Institute of Science Bangalore |
| Department | Department of Computer Science and Automation |
| Country | India |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | My team contributed expertise in formal specification, refinement, and verification of software. We contributed to the verification of FreeRTOS, the popular open-source real-time operating system. We helped our Indian colleagues develop expertise in Z and Z/Eves and helped them apply it to verification problems. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Colleagues at the Indian Institute of Science and General Motors India helped us to understand the FreeRTOS code and extract suitable abstract specifications of aspects of its behaviour. |
| Impact | Three projects funded by the British Council, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-Physical Systems (total value £175k). One conference paper (10.1007/978-3-319-25423-4_11). One journal paper (10.1007/s00165-014-0308-9). Two Phd theses: Sumesh Divakaran: A Refinement-Based Methodology for Verifying Abstract Data Type Implementations (IISc, 2015). Shu Cheng: Formally modelling and verifying the FreeRTOS real-time operating system (York, 2014). |
| Start Year | 2010 |
| Description | D-RisQ |
| Organisation | D-RisQ |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Development of a case study, the alpha algorithm, using the techniques for modelling and simulation developed in the project. As a result of a our joint efforts, we have evolved both our reserch and their product. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Development of a case study, the alpha algorithm, using the techniques for modelling and simulation used in their company. As a result of a our joint efforts, we evolved both our reserch and their product. |
| Impact | * A case study, including two models, several simulations. * Improvements to D-RisQ's tools. * Improvements to our notation to deal with collections of robots. * Improvements to our simulation approach. |
| Start Year | 2016 |
| Description | Distinguished Visiting Professor |
| Organisation | Fudan University |
| Country | China |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | New appointment for Prof Timmis to explore further applications of the technology in intelligent robotics. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Initial discussions on case studies and possible research student supervision. |
| Impact | None as yes. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | ECNU - Shanghai UPPAL |
| Organisation | East China Normal University (ECNU) |
| Country | China |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We bring in expertise in robotics, simulation, and model-based engineering, including the design and semantics of RoboSim. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They bring in expertise in timed and probabilistic model checking, and verification using bisimulation. |
| Impact | A tool under development and a paper in preparation. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | FMI Step Negotiation |
| Organisation | Aarhus University |
| Department | Department of Engineering |
| Country | Denmark |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Meetings to discuss how to verify co-simulation algorithms with algebraic loops and adaptive steps. Our insight is to use angelic nondeterminism to specify backtracking. This requires new theories of state-rich, reactive, angelic nondeterminism. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Aarhus are the problem owners. They contributed expertise in the functional mock-up interface (FMI) and the problems of adaptive co-simulaiton. |
| Impact | Paper: Simon Thrane Hansen, Cláudio Gomes, Maurizio Palmieri, Casper Thule, Jaco van de Pol, Jim Woodcock: Verification of Co-simulation Algorithms Subject to Algebraic Loops and Adaptive Steps. FMICS 2021: 3-20 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-85248-1_1 |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | FitzLarsen CPS EU |
| Organisation | Aarhus University |
| Department | School of Engineering |
| Country | Denmark |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Our collaboration has involved two major EU projects. My research team brought expertise in modelling, formal semantics, mechanised proof, and model checking. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Newcastle made contribution in modelling and methods. Aarhus made contributions in tool building. |
| Impact | Also see http://www.compass-research.eu/. Outputs: Funding for two large EU projects. Publications: 8 conference papers, 4 journal papers, 2 book chapters. Citations: > 600 in total. Multi-disciplinary collaboration covering systems, software, hardware, control theory, and electronics. |
| Start Year | 2009 |
| Description | Formal methods in security |
| Organisation | Aarhus University |
| Department | Department of Engineering |
| Country | Denmark |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise in formal methods in security |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise in formal methods in security |
| Impact | Technical report: Tomas Kulik, Brijesh Dongol, Peter Gorm Larsen, Hugo Daniel Macedo, Steve Schneider, Peter Würtz Vinther Tran-Jørgensen, Jim Woodcock: A Survey of Practical Formal Methods for Security. CoRR abs/2109.01362 (2021) Accepted for publication in ACM Formal Aspects of Computing. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Formal methods in security |
| Organisation | University of Surrey |
| Department | Department of Computing |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise in formal methods in security |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise in formal methods in security |
| Impact | Technical report: Tomas Kulik, Brijesh Dongol, Peter Gorm Larsen, Hugo Daniel Macedo, Steve Schneider, Peter Würtz Vinther Tran-Jørgensen, Jim Woodcock: A Survey of Practical Formal Methods for Security. CoRR abs/2109.01362 (2021) Accepted for publication in ACM Formal Aspects of Computing. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Hybrid Model Checking - CORA |
| Organisation | Technical University of Munich |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We bring expertise in robotics, the design and semantics of the RoboWorld language, and the CyPhyCircus hybrid process algebra. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They bring expertise in hybrid model checking, and development on the CORA hybrid model checker to support our models. |
| Impact | Models in CORA based on the semantics of RoboWorld, testing and enhancement of the CORA hybrid model checker. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | INTO-CPS collaboration |
| Organisation | Aarhus University |
| Country | Denmark |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Collaboration between EU Horizon 2020 project and RoboCalc. RoboCalc contributed to a new work item in INTO-CPS on adding new languages and tools to the INTO-CPS toolchain. Specifically, the probabilistic version of RoboChart and its translation to the PRISM model checker. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Work carried out by investigator funded by INTO-CPS project. |
| Impact | Draft publications. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | INTO-CPS collaboration |
| Organisation | Newcastle University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Collaboration between EU Horizon 2020 project and RoboCalc. RoboCalc contributed to a new work item in INTO-CPS on adding new languages and tools to the INTO-CPS toolchain. Specifically, the probabilistic version of RoboChart and its translation to the PRISM model checker. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Work carried out by investigator funded by INTO-CPS project. |
| Impact | Draft publications. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Interaction trees |
| Organisation | Seoul National University |
| Country | Korea, Republic of |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise in UTP semantics and Isabelle. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise in interaction trees. |
| Impact | Technical report: Simon Foster, Chung-Kil Hur, Jim Woodcock: Formally Verified Simulations of State-Rich Processes using Interaction Trees in Isabelle/HOL. CoRR abs/2105.05133 (2021) Implementation in Isabelle/UTP. Contributions to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching: PROF module. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Lectures on Probabilistic Robotics |
| Organisation | Aarhus University |
| Department | Department of Engineering |
| Country | Denmark |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Outreach and dissemination through research-based teaching. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Providing an audience of engineering students. |
| Impact | Lecture not4s, slides, and videos. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Lectures on Programming and Modelling |
| Organisation | Aarhus University |
| Department | Department of Engineering |
| Country | Denmark |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Research-based teaching. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Provision of engineering student audience. |
| Impact | Lecture notes, slides, and videos. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Mota UFPE |
| Organisation | Federal University of Pernambuco |
| Country | Brazil |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Collaboration on probabilistic aspects of RoboChart language: semantics, examples, tools. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Collaborative work on probabilistic RoboChart. |
| Impact | Draft publications. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Partnership in the application of RoboChart |
| Organisation | Fudan University |
| Country | China |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Training for use of RoboChart |
| Collaborator Contribution | Explaining the potential collaborative research area of RoboChart |
| Impact | No. |
| Start Year | 2019 |
| Description | Reducing the Cyber Attack Surface |
| Organisation | Aarhus University |
| Department | Department of Engineering |
| Country | Denmark |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Survey of verifiable computation techniques. Experiments. Proposal for future work. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Contributions to report. |
| Impact | Reports. Draft publications. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Reducing the Cyber Attack Surface |
| Organisation | D-RisQ |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Survey of verifiable computation techniques. Experiments. Proposal for future work. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Contributions to report. |
| Impact | Reports. Draft publications. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Reducing the Cyber Attack Surface |
| Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Survey of verifiable computation techniques. Experiments. Proposal for future work. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Contributions to report. |
| Impact | Reports. Draft publications. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Royal Academy of Engineering Industry Fellowship |
| Organisation | Thales Group |
| Department | Thales UK Limited |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Co-supervision of student and industry fellows. |
| Collaborator Contribution | We are developing a technique to model and verify mobile and autonomous robots with humans in the loop. |
| Impact | Multi-disciplinary: Engineering and Psychology. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Simomics Robotics |
| Organisation | Simomics Ltd |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Expertise on modelling and verification of robotics systems. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Tools for modelling auditing and assurance cases. |
| Impact | A tool is under development. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Sound simulation of robotic applications |
| Organisation | Federal University of Pernambuco |
| Country | Brazil |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We have brought to them expertise on the results and approaches to modelling and verifying robotic applications, and developing simulations. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They have brought in experience in model-based software engineering, compositional verification, testing, and probabilistic model checking. They have employed a research assistant to to work on the project and collaborate with our group. Together, we are developing a domain-specific language for modelling simulations. The language has a formal semantics under development. They are in charge of developing tool support for this language, and developing tool support for probabilistic reasoning. |
| Impact | Tools are under development and papers are submitted. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Testing from Circus with Mealy Machines |
| Organisation | Universidade de São Paulo |
| Department | Institute of Mathematical and Computer Sciences (ICMC) |
| Country | Brazil |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise on model-based testing based on process algebras and resfinement. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise on testing based on Mealy machines. |
| Impact | Joint papers |
| Start Year | 2015 |
| Description | Transport Systems Catapult - Autonomous Vehicle |
| Organisation | Transport Systems Catapult |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Modelling, analysis and simulation of the control system of an autonomous vehicle. Using the tools and techniques developed in RoboCalc, we will explore the limits of what is possible to model, analyse and simulate with respect to a complex realistic controller where safety concerns are of utmost importance. |
| Collaborator Contribution | They are experts in the development of transport systems. As well as their expertise, they will provides us with documentation and source code regarding the specific case study. |
| Impact | *A case study, the largest RoboChart model to date. *Preliminary analysis results based on model checking technology. *The model and results will be published in a book, which is currently at the final stages of publication. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Uncertainty |
| Organisation | King's College London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Discussions between the University of York and King's College London on a future research proposal. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Discussions between the University of York and King's College London on a future research proposal. |
| Impact | Draft research proposal. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Uncertainty in autonomous systems |
| Organisation | King's College London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Definition of probabilistic semantics in UTP and implementation in Isabelle/UTP. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Problems, examples, case studies. |
| Impact | No outputs yet. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Uncertainty in autonomous systems |
| Organisation | University of York |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Definition of probabilistic semantics in UTP and implementation in Isabelle/UTP. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Problems, examples, case studies. |
| Impact | No outputs yet. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | VSR collaborations |
| Organisation | Microsoft Research |
| Department | Microsoft Research Cambridge |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Organising the UK's contribution to the Verified Software Initiative. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Suppliers of case studies, verification technology, challenge project prizes, organisers of workshops. |
| Impact | Collection of verification case studies for experimentation by the verification community. |
| Start Year | 2006 |
| Description | VSR collaborations |
| Organisation | Praxis Systems Ltd |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Organising the UK's contribution to the Verified Software Initiative. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Suppliers of case studies, verification technology, challenge project prizes, organisers of workshops. |
| Impact | Collection of verification case studies for experimentation by the verification community. |
| Start Year | 2006 |
| Description | Verification and uncertainties in self-integrating systems |
| Organisation | Aarhus University |
| Department | Department of Engineering |
| Country | Denmark |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise in unification of semantics and verification techniques. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise in self-integrating systems and uncertainty. |
| Impact | Publication: Lukas Esterle, Barry Porter, Jim Woodcock: Verification and Uncertainties in Self-integrating System. ACSOS-C 2021: 220-225 DOI: 10.1109/ACSOS-C52956.2021.00050 |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Verification and uncertainties in self-integrating systems |
| Organisation | Lancaster University |
| Department | School of Computing and Communications |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Expertise in unification of semantics and verification techniques. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Expertise in self-integrating systems and uncertainty. |
| Impact | Publication: Lukas Esterle, Barry Porter, Jim Woodcock: Verification and Uncertainties in Self-integrating System. ACSOS-C 2021: 220-225 DOI: 10.1109/ACSOS-C52956.2021.00050 |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Verification grand challenge history |
| Organisation | Altran |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | History of the Verified Software Initiative |
| Collaborator Contribution | Personal accounts of contributions to the Verified Software Initiative. |
| Impact | Publication: Jim Woodcock, Janet Barnes, Rod Chapman, Simon Foster, Thomas Santen: Verification in the Grand Challenge. Theories of Programming 2021: 125-156 DOI: 10.1145/3477355.3477363 |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Verification grand challenge history |
| Organisation | Technical University Berlin |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | History of the Verified Software Initiative |
| Collaborator Contribution | Personal accounts of contributions to the Verified Software Initiative. |
| Impact | Publication: Jim Woodcock, Janet Barnes, Rod Chapman, Simon Foster, Thomas Santen: Verification in the Grand Challenge. Theories of Programming 2021: 125-156 DOI: 10.1145/3477355.3477363 |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | bangalore-2018 |
| Organisation | Indian Institute of Science Bangalore |
| Country | India |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Newton grant from RAEng held by IIIT-B. Contributions on refinement of simulink models. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Research in refinement of simulink models. |
| Impact | Simon Foster, Kangfeng Ye, Ana Cavalcanti, Jim Woodcock: Calculational Verification of Reactive Programs with Reactive Relations and Kleene Algebra. RAMiCS 2018: 205-224 Simon Foster, Kangfeng Ye, Ana Cavalcanti, Jim Woodcock: Calculational Verification of Reactive Programs with Reactive Relations and Kleene Algebra. CoRR abs/1806.02101 (2018) |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | butterfield-tcd-march-2018 |
| Organisation | Trinity College Dublin |
| Department | Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute |
| Country | Ireland |
| Sector | Hospitals |
| PI Contribution | Research discussions at TCD. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Research discussions. |
| Impact | Discussions on future research collaborations. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | chongqing-2-2018 |
| Organisation | Southwest University |
| Country | China |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Royal Society China Cost Share Programme |
| Collaborator Contribution | Research contributions. |
| Impact | None yet. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | chongqing2018 |
| Organisation | Southwest University |
| Country | China |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Royal Society China Cost Share Programme. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Rsearch contributions. |
| Impact | No outputs yet. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | digit-2018 |
| Organisation | Aarhus University |
| Department | Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies |
| Country | Denmark |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Planning for future collaboration. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Research exchanges. |
| Impact | Proposal to Grundfos Foundation. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | peleska-testing-2018 |
| Organisation | University of Bremen |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Rsearch discussions. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Rsearch discussions. |
| Impact | Research proposals. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Title | Automated Verification of Reactive and Concurrent Programs by Calculation, supporting material |
| Description | Abstract Event-driven reactive programs combine traditional sequential programming constructs with primitives to allow communication with other concurrent agents. They are ubiquitous in modern applications, ranging from components systems and web services, to cyber physical systems and autonomous robots, and so verification support for them is highly desirable. We present a verification strategy for concurrent and reactive programs, with a large or infinite state space, utilising algebraic laws for reactive relations. We define novel operators to characterise interactions and state updates, and an associated equational theory. With this we can calculate a reactive program's denotational semantics, and thereby facilitate automated proof. Of note is our reasoning support for iterative programs with reactive invariants, which is supported by Kleene algebra, and parallel composition, which allows flexible specification of various concurrency schemes. We illustrate our strategy by verifying a reactive buffer. Our laws and strategy are mechanised in Isabelle/UTP, our implementation of Hoare and He's Unifying Theories of Programming (UTP) semantic framework, which provides soundness guarantees, and practical verification support. Isabelle Formalisation This archive accompanies the JLAMP journal submission, "Automated Verification of Reactive and Concurrent Programs by Calculation". All of the Isabelle/HOL theories needed to support the theorems developed in this paper are included, and also the dependencies from the Archive of Formal Proofs (AFP). This development depends on Isabelle/2019 (from https://isabelle.in.tum.de/). In order to view the theories, you first need to make Isabelle aware of the Isabelle/UTP directly. You can either do this by adding a reference to its absolute path in the ROOTS file of your Isabelle installation, or else by invoking Isabelle on the command line with a command such as:
|
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| URL | https://zenodo.org/record/3541079 |
| Title | Isabelle/UTP |
| Description | Hoare and He's Unifying Theories of Programming is a framework for construction of denotational semantic meta-models for a variety of programming languages based on an alphabetised relational calculus. Isabelle/UTP is an implementation of their framework based in Isabelle/HOL. It can be used to formalise semantic building blocks for programming language paradigms (based on UTP theories), prove algebraic laws of programming, and then use these laws to construct program verification tools. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The software was applied to verification of a fan control unit controller, and a railway signalling system as part of the previous INTO-CPS EU project. It is currently being applied to model autonomous robots. |
| URL | https://isabelle-utp.york.ac.uk/ |
| Title | RoboToool |
| Description | RoboTool provides a graphical editor for models written in a domain-specific language for robotics, RoboChart. RoboTool also generates automatically mathematical definitions that capture the behaviour of the RoboChart model, and is integrated with a model checker. This is a tool that is able to use the mathematical definitions to prove properties like freedom of deadlock and livelock. Instead of testing the system or the model, a model checker explores exhaustively all the states of the model to ensure that the property of interest is satisfied in all states. Using the definition generated by RoboTool, we can also prove specific properties of a robotic system, like impossibility of ignoring a particular event in given circumstances, for example. If, however, the property does not hold, a model checker provides a counterexample. RoboTool is provided as a set of Eclipse plugins implemented using the Xtext 1 and Sirius 2 frameworks. Xtext automatically generates plugins that implement a parser, and provides mechanisms for the implementation of validators, type checkers, and code generators, for instance. Sirius supports the definition of graphical representations, and produces a plugin for construction and visualisation of models. The model checker used by RoboTool is FDR4. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | General interest in academia and industry in using the results of our project. |
| URL | https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/circus/RoboCalc/robotool/ |
| Title | SLEECVAL: Specification and Validation of Normative Rules for Autonomous Agents |
| Description | Growing range of applications use autonomous agents such as AI and robotic systems to perform tasks deemed dangerous, tedious or costly for humans. To truly succeed with these tasks, the autonomous agents must perform them without violating the social, legal, ethical, empathetic, and cultural (SLEEC) norms of their users and operators. We introduce SLEECVAL, a tool for specification and validation of rules that reflect these SLEEC norms. Our tool supports the specification of SLEEC rules in a DSL. we co-defined with the help of ethicists, lawyers and stakeholders from health and social care, and uses the CSP refinement checker FDR4 to identify redundant and conflicting rules in a SLEEC specification. We illustrate the use of SLEECVAL for two case studies: an assistive dressing robot, and a firefighting drone. |
| Type Of Technology | New/Improved Technique/Technology |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | SLEECVAL enables specification and validation of non-functional rules with the focus on SLEEC (social, legal, ethical, empathetic, and cultural) principles for autonomous agents. To best of our knowledge, our language and tool are novel in their support to formalise and validate normative rules that address SLEEC concerns. Our vision is to provide an automated framework to specify, validate, and verify that agents follow rules, reporting redundancy and conflicts. |
| URL | https://sleec.github.io |
| Description | 18th International Summer School on Trustworthy Software |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Ana Cavalcanti and Jim Woodcock led courses on Software Engineering for Robotics and Isabelle/HOL as part of the 18th International Summer School on Trustworthy Software organised by the School of Software Engineering of East China Normal University. RoboStar colleagues James Baxter , Gustavo Carvalho , Alvaro Miyazawa , Pedro Ribeiro and Matt Windsor delivered practicals and seminars. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | 18th International Summer School on Trustworthy Software |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | In August 2022, we delivered a series of lectures via video link to graduate students at East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai, China as part of the 18th International Summer School on Trustworthy Software organised by the Software Engineering Institute at the ECNU. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://seisummerschool.github.io/2022/ |
| Description | 1st Belt & Road Conference on Science and Engineering Exchange, Chongqing |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Keynote presentation. National and regional TV interviews. Discussions with international, national, and regional science China policymakers. Interview on national TV (CCTV) and local TV (Congqing CQTV). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | A demonstration of probabilistic modelling and verification in RoboTool to researcher in University of Agder |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Demonstrated the probabilistic modelling and verification in RoboTool through PRISM to colleagues in the University of Agder on February 26th 2020 via Skype. Audiences include researcher and master students. At the same time, Pedro demonstrated RoboTool in general. To prepare for this demo, an online resource (see https://robostar.cs.york.ac.uk/prob_case_studies/probabilistic_verification_tutorial/index.html) was created. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | ASE 2023 - Tutorial on Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic and Cultural Requirements: from Elicitation to Verification |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | On the 15 of September, colleagues Sinem Getir Yaman, Ana Cavalcanti, Radu Calinescu, and Beverly Townsend, from the UKRI TAS Node on Resilience, will be holding a tutorial on "Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic and Cultural Requirements: from Elicitation to Verification" at the 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2023). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | ASEP professional development course. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Professional development course on assurance and proof. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/professional/assured-software-engineering-proof/ |
| Description | Aarhus Lectures on probabilistic robotics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | I delivered a series of six lectures on probabilistic robotic control to undergraduates in engineering at Aarhus University. The lectures were prepared as curated videos with lecture notes. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Are you Talking to your Autonomous Car? (Maybe you should!) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Ana Cavalcanti featured as a speaker in the latest Living with AI Podcast of the TAS Hub. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.buzzsprout.com/1447474/11041372 |
| Description | BCS FACS Evening Seminar |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The BCS Specialist Group for practitioners in Formal Aspects of Computing Science has members drawn from both industry and academia. It acts as a bridge between the two communities, helping British industry to stay in the forefront of formal computer techniques, and British academics to maintain the applicability of their research. It arranges informal seminars to encourage technology transfer throughout the year: about four a year. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://www.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/56123 |
| Description | Bristol BAME STEM seminar on Software Engineering for Robotics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Webinar on my career journey and research interests to a wide range of scientists and Science Administrators for wider dissemination. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | CUP journal. Research Directions: Cyber-Physical Systems |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Development and launch of a new journal. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/research-directions-cyber-physical-systems |
| Description | China Lectures on probabilistic robotics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | I delivered a series of six lectures on probabilistic robotic control. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Course at School of Software, Northwest Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | I contributed to a tutorial on the use of the RoboChart notation for formal verification of robotic applications. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | CyPhyAssure Spring School |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Participation in Spring School on the assurance of cyber-physical systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/circus/CyPhyAssure/school/ |
| Description | DIGIT Advisory Board |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Participation in the advisory board of the center for digital twins at Aarhus University, |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Dagstuhl seminar on Integrated Rigorous Analysis in Cyber-Physical Systems Engineering |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Week-long seminar of world experts on cyber-physical systems. Seminar report. Publication. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.dagstuhl.de/en/seminars/seminar-calendar/seminar-details/23041 |
| Description | ECNU summer school |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | In August 2022, we delivered a series of lectures via video link to graduate students at East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai, China as part of a summer school on Trustworthy Systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://seisummerschool.github.io/2022/ |
| Description | FM 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Talks and discussions with international colleagues. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Formal Methods Symposium |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Papers were presented, talks were given, and specialist group meetings were organised. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.fmeurope.org/symposia/ |
| Description | Formally Verified Animation for RoboChart using Interaction Trees at ICFEM2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A talk about "Formally Verified Animation for RoboChart using Interaction Trees" given at the conference ICFEM2022 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | http://maude.ucm.es/ICFEM22/index.html |
| Description | Guest lecture on model-based software engineering for robotics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | I delivered a two-part guest lecture on "Model-based software engineering for robotics", as part of the undegratuate module "Model-Driven Engineering" (Computer Science, University of York), based on outputs of my research on sound model-transformation from RoboChart to RoboSim. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Huawei Research Forum |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Presentation on formal methods for assurance of security-related software in Huawei 5G products. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Huawei Research Symposium |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of my research agenda to Huawei engineers. I gave advice on future research policy for their company. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | ICTAC: International Colloquium on Theoretical Aspects of Computing, Lima, Peru |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Presented research to internatiomnal audience. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://ictac2023.compsust.utec.edu.pe/ |
| Description | IFIP WG 2.3 Programming Methodology |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Hosted meeting of IFIP WG 2.3 on Programming Methodology. Organised scientific and social agenda, chaired the meeting, and gave an extended scientific talk. I involved my doctoral students and research assistants in the meeting. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://ifip-tc2-wg23.paluno.uni-due.de/?page_id=455 |
| Description | Integrated Rigorous Analysis in Cyber-Physical Systems Engineering (Dagstuhl Seminar 23041) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | International seminar (one week) on the integrated rigorous analysis of cyber-physical systems. Presentations, discussions, published summary. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DagRep.13.1.155 |
| Description | Invited Lecture at University of Sheffield |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | the research at a level accessible to young researchers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Invited course at the School of Software, Northwest Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This is a school organised by a consortium of Chinese universities that provides younger researchers with the background on the state of the art in the area of software engineering. The course sparked questions and discussion afterwards. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Invited course at the School of the International Colloquium on Theoretical Aspects of Computing |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This is a school associated with an international conference that provides younger researchers with the background on the state of the art in the area of theoretical aspects of computing. The course sparked questions and discussion afterwards, and led to a publication. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://ictac2021.github.io/school.html |
| Description | Invited lecture University of Leicester |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Present the research at a level accessible to young researchers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/informatics/news/researchevents/external |
| Description | Invited lecture at the International School on Formal Methods and Theoretical Informatics (ETMF) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This is a school associated with an international conference that provides younger students with the background to follow the paper presentations in the conference. The course sparked questions and discussion afterwards and during the main event. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://sites.google.com/computacao.ufcg.edu.br/sbmf2021/program |
| Description | Invited talk at BCS on How can we define operational requirements in robotics? |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On the 9th of May, Ana Cavalcanti lead a seminar on "How can we define operational requirements in robotics?" together with colleagues James Baxter and Gustavo Carvalho . The event was organised by BCS London Central Branch and BCS North London branch, for IT professionals. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Invited talk at HIS (High- Integrity Software) 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Now in its sixth year, the mission of the High Integrity Software conference is to share challenges, best practice and experience between software engineering practitioners. The conference features talks from industrial and academic specialists which disseminate experience and knowledge of important techniques and methods that are applicable across industry sectors. I have presented the technology developed in our researcher. It sparked questions and discussion, afterwards, and later contacts with a view to exchange ideas and collaborate. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.his-2017.co.uk/ |
| Description | Invited talk at the IROS2021 Workshop on Standardised Software Frameworks for Robotics in Nuclear |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was a workshop organised by colleagues in industry. It gave us the opportunity to present our results and spark discussion with practitioners who are themselves interested in technological developments in the area. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://ukaeaevents.com/2021-ieee-rsj/ |
| Description | Invited talk at the York & North Yorkshire LEP Skills Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Ana Cavalcanti delivered an invited talk at the York & North Yorkshire LEP Skills Conference on "Software Engineering for Robotics in Industry 4.0". The talk can be watched on YouTube |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.ynylep.com/news/festival-of-engagement/event/id/2220 |
| Description | Invited talk on probabilistic robotics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | I delivered an invited talk at a summer school in Shanghai. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Isabelle/UTP Tutorials in Southwest University, Chongqing, China |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This tutorial lasted for two afternoons, covers three main topics: functional programming with Isabelle/HOL, imperative programming with Isabelle/UTP, and reactive programming with Isabelle/UTP. The material of the tutorial is very much based on the tutorial that Dr. Simon Foster gave during CyphyAssure Spring School. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | http://computer.swu.edu.cn/s/computer/kxyj2xsky/20190509/3706486.html |
| Description | LMS Computer Science Colloquium talk - Verification of control software for robots that learn |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On the 1st of December, Professor Ana Cavalcanti gave a talk at the LMS Computer Science Colloquium titled "Verification of control software for robots that learn", explaining the approach adopted in RoboStar to verify intelligent systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.lms.ac.uk/events/lms-computer-science-colloquium-2023 |
| Description | Newton Institue Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | I gave a talk about the impact of verification technology on practical application. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Open Day |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of robotic applications developed using our techniques. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | Opening of Aarhus Centre for Digital Twins |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Keynote talk on research direction at the opening of the Centre for Digital Twins at Aarhus University. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://digit.au.dk/research-projects/centre-for-digital-twins/ |
| Description | Organisation of RoboStar and YorRobots Industry Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | On 11-12 October YorRobots and RoboStar hosted an Industry Exhibition. There were talks and demonstrations by RoboStar colleagues and from YorRobots, The Institute for Safe Autonomy, Adelard, AgroIntelli, BAE, Bristol Robotics Lab, ClearSy, Chemspeed Technologies, Connected Places, LabMan, LDRA, DRis-Q, Dyson, RobotCenter, ShadowRobot, Thales and VSI. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://robostar.cs.york.ac.uk/events/yrie2022/ |
| Description | Organised and Participated in Computer Science Postgraduate welcome Research Showcase and Panel |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Organised a postgraduate welcome week event to showcase existing Computer Science research within the University of York, alongside chairing a panel of existing students sharing research experiences. The research showcase was a series of short presentations. This has sparked interest from new postgraduate researchers in my own research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Present "Engineering Robotic Swarms" in the Pint of Science at York |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Presented at Pivni of York from 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM on May 22, 2019, with James Baxter and Richard Redpath (Jon Timmis). Abstract Robots are becoming part of our everyday lives, from making cars and cleaning the house to assisting with surgery and exploring areas too dangerous for humans to enter. But can we trust them to be safe? In this talk, we look at ways that Mathematics, Computer Science, and Software Engineering can play a part to ensure that robots behave in the way we expect them to. We discuss groups of robots working together and the problems and solutions related to working with them. We show the power of these techniques lives in action. Using frogs. And the audience. What could possibly go wrong? |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://pintofscience.co.uk/event/-blurred-lines-boundaries-between-man-and-machine |
| Description | Presentation at IFIP WG 2.3 Meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Our work on modelling for robotics was presented to the members of the Working Group on Programming Methodology, as well as to the invited observers. The goal of the presentation was to disseminate our work and receive feedback on current research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation at IFIP WG 2.3 Meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Recent work on priorities, related to the formal semantics of RoboChart and RoboSim, was presented to the Working Group on Programming Methodology, as well as to the invited speakers. The goal of the presentation was to disseminate our work and receive feedback on ongoing research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation at Pint of Science Festival 2018 in York |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Pint of Science festival is run every year bringing researchers to local pubs to present their work to the general public. In this talk, we motivated our work using robotic demonstrators and presented our main results. The talk was followed by a number of interesting questions from the public. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://pintofscience.co.uk/event/are-you-sure-you-are-safe |
| Description | Presentation at Pint of Science Festival 2019 in York |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Pint of Science festival is run every year bringing researchers to local pubs to present their work to the general public. In this talk, we presented our work on modelling and verifying the robot software, with particular focus on application of our approach to robot swarms. The talk was followed by a number of interesting questions from the public. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://pintofscience.co.uk/event/-blurred-lines-boundaries-between-man-and-machine |
| Description | Presentation at RoboStar and YorRobots Industry Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | On 11th October 2022, I gave a talk and presented a poster on the semantics of the RoboWorld language and the use of hybrid model checking to check the semantics. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://robostar.cs.york.ac.uk/events/yrie2022/ |
| Description | Presentation at meeting with BSI |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I presented an overview of the RoboCalc and RoboTest projects at a meeting with British Standards Institution and the Assuring Autonomy International Programme at York, which discussed standards in AI, robotics and autonomy. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Presentation of project to Thales |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of the project to consider possible collaboration. Six colleagues from Thales attended. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentations at RoboStar and YorRobots Industry Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | On 11-12 October, I gave three talks on the work developed in the RoboCalc and RoboTest projects at an Industry Exhibition. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://robostar.cs.york.ac.uk/events/yrie2022/ |
| Description | Presented "Modelling and verification of probabilistic behaviour of robotic applications" during a two-day workshop to communicate with our visitors (Prof. Zhiming Liu and his team) from Southwest University |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Agenda: 1. Overview of RoboChart; 2. Background of reactive modules, PRISM and MDP; 3. How to transform models from RoboChart to PRISM; 4. Verification support through PRISM and the assertion language in RoboTool; 5. Example and performance. Date: Jul 23, 2019 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Location: University of York This talk was presented during a two-day workshop to communicate with our visitors (Prof. Zhiming Liu and his team) from Southwest University, Chongqing, China. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Probabilistic modelling and verification using RoboChart and PRISM at MODELS2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited as a Journal-first paper by International Journal on Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM) to present our work at MODELS 2022 on 27th October 2022 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://conf.researchr.org/home/models-2022 |
| Description | Public lecture |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Short lecture on the interaction between biology and robotics and the need to develop safe robotic systems that can interact with humans and the environment. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Public talk as part of YorkTalks |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | About 300 people attended an event in the university The talks sparked questions and discussion afterwards, with the public, and with other colleagues involved in the event. The aim of the overall event is to showcase the very best of the University's research across seven research themes in order to exemplify our commitment to research excellence which forms a key component of the University Strategy and the Research Strategy. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.york.ac.uk/research/events/yorktalks/ |
| Description | RAMiCS 2021 conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A talk about "Automated Reasoning for Probabilistic Sequential Programs with Theorem Proving" in the conference RAMiCS 2021 on November 4, 2021. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://ramics19.lis-lab.fr/ |
| Description | REF 2021 Subpanel 11 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Computer Science subpanel member for Research Evaluation Framework 2021. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| Description | Research visit to Aarhus University |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Discussion on current research collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | RoboCheck |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | About 40 research students attended a school organised in York. Afterwards, several students showed interest in our project and our interests. We have discussed ideas for further work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/circus/RoboCalc-event/ |
| Description | RoboSoft: software engineering for robotics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | RoboSoft was a two-day event that will brought together researchers working on software engineering for robotics, developers working on the next generation of robotic systems in various areas of application, and regulation authorities interested in safety of robotic systems. RoboSoft provides a platform to establish software engineering for robotics as an important discipline in computer science and electronic engineering. The objective was to establish a common understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed to ensure that results are relevant to industrial practice and regulation. The group organised the whole event and gave three presentations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.raeng.org.uk/events/events-programme/2019/november/robosoft-software-engineering-for-rob... |
| Description | RoboStar and YorRobots Industry Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | On 11th October 2022, I was a speaker in two talks on "RoboSim: software models for sound simulation" and "Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node on Verifiability", and co-presented (as well as co-authored) three posters during the exhibition: (1) "RoboSim: software models for sound simulation"; (2) "Autonomous Fire-Fighting UAV" ; (3) "Safety Assurance of an Industrial Robotic Control System Using Hardware/Software Co-Verification" related to my on-going collaboration with the University of Agder (Norwary), Norwegian University of Life Sciences and ABB Robotics. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://robostar.cs.york.ac.uk/events/yrie2022/ |
| Description | RoboStar test generation presented at Huawei Grenoble |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Ana Cavalcanti presented an invited lecture to Huawei Grenoble on 25 October, 2023. The invitation came from the Huawei Fermat Lab, and the audience included colleagues online from China and Hong Kong. Ana presented RoboStar work on automatic test generation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Robotics and Software Engineering Conference (RSE'23), KCL |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Presented research work on robotics and uncertainty. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://rsemeeting.github.io/rse2023/ |
| Description | Royal Academy of Engineering GEEP (Graduate Engineering Engagement Programmme) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | On the 29th of January, 2024, Ana Cavalcanti met with a group of more than 60 students in a webinar session, where they discussed the RoboStar views for Software Engineering of AI-enabled systems. GEEP is an award-winning programmme run in partnership with employers to increase the transition of engineering graduates from diverse backgrounds into engineering employment. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://raeng.org.uk/programmes-and-prizes/programmes/uk-grants-and-prizes/support-for-education/gra... |
| Description | Royal Academy of Engineering Research Forum |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Research Forum is a highlight of the Academy's activities. It showcases the world-class engineering research funded through the Academy's wide range of programmes. The event consists of a mix of keynote talks from current awardees and alumni. Awardees from across the portfolio of Academy's research schemes will also exhibit posters and demos throughout the day. The project was presented in a keynote talk. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.raeng.org.uk/events/events-programme/2019/november/research-forum |
| Description | School visit (London) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Prof Timmis gave a series of talks to years 10 and 12 students at St, Michael's College, Burmonsea, London. The talks were around the use of robotics and their limitations and issues around safety. In addition, he talked about careers in the subject area. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Spring School on Engineering Trustworthy Software Systems |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Spring School on Engineering Trustworthy Software Systems (SETSS), held in April, 2016, at Southwest University in Chongqing, China. The school was aimed at post-graduate students, researchers, academics, and industrial engineers who are interested in the theory and practice of methods and tools for the design and programming of trustworthy software systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | Summer School |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Second Summer School in 2023 at ECNU. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Summer School lecturess |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Lectures delivered at a Summer School at ECNU in Shanghai. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Symposium for Marie-Claude Gaudel |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | I gave a talk on software engineering for robotic control. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Talk at Huawei engineering conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | A talk was given at Huawei's engineering conference on advance software engineering practice. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Talk at Verification Future Meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | I gave an invited talk at this industry meeting. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.testandverification.com/conferences/verification-futures/vf2019 |
| Description | Tutorial at 25th Brazilian Symposium on Formal Methods |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | On 8 December 2022, Alvaro Miyazawa lead a tutorial on "RoboStar and RoboTool: Software Engineering for Robotics using Formal Methods". The tutorial was part of the 25th Brazilian Symposium on Formal Methods. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://sites.google.com/dcomp.ufs.br/sbmf2022/keynotes-tutorials?authuser=0 |
| Description | UK-RAS Network RoboTalk Podcast |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Podcast organised by the UK-RAS network to describe research and projects of my group. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.ukras.org.uk/news/robot-talk-episode-thirty-out-now |
| Description | UTP and BDI agents |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Preliminary work to establish future research collaborations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Verifiability Talk |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Presentation on A Unifying Framework for Verifiability as part of the seminar series for the EPSRC Trusted Autonomous Systems Verifiability Node. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUv5i9NYgNU |
| Description | Verifiability Talk |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of the RoboStar approach to Software Engineering for Robotics, including modelling and testing |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Video on cyber-physical systems |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Video promoting research in cyber-physical systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/research-directions-cyber-physical-systems |
| Description | Visit by Jan Pekeska |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Discussions on research collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Visit by Ziming Liiu |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Visit to discuss long-term research collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Visit from Southwest University |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Visit from a delegation from Southwest University, Chongqing, China. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Visit from TCD Ireland |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Visit from colleagues from Trinity College Dublin. Contributions on probabilistic semantic for robotics. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019 |
| Description | Visit ti Aarhus University |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Visit to exchange research ideas. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Visit to Aarhus University |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Research visit to AArhus University for continuing collaboration |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Visit to Chongqing |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Workshop on formal methods for human-cyber-=physical systems. I gave talks on software engineering for robotics. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Visit to Chongqing |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Visit Southwest University to give lectures and direct doctoral students. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Visit to IISc |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of research work. Exchange of research ideas for future research proposals. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Visit to IISc Bangalore |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Workshop at IISc funded by Royal Academy of Engineering. Discussed work on formal verification of operating system real-time kernels. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Visit to Malardalen University |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | External examining of a doctoral student. Interaction with academic colleagues on research directions. Interaction with industry colleagues on research directions. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Visit to Southwest University |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Visit to exchange ideas. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Visit to Southwest University, Chongqing, China. Visit to Tong Ji University, Shanghai. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of research and planning for future funding of international research programme. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Visit to VSI Bremen |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Visit to VSI in Bremen to discuss future research collaboration, especially in verification of learning-enabled systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | White Rose Retreat on Robotics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | Discussed future collaborative in robotics. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Workshop for Advisory Board and additional representatives from academia and industry |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Meeting of the Advisory Board to report on our results from RoboCalc and kick-off RoboTest. The joint meeting of the projects was very positive. There was a lot of discussion and good feedback. Further colleagues from industry asked to join the Advisory Board afterwards. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Workshop for academics and industrialists in Pernambuco, Brazil |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A workshop organised by the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil, to present our project and their own experiences in robotics, ranging from support technology development, participation in competitions, to actual deployment of systems. In attendance were academics and students from the local Centre of Informatics, other departments interested in applications, and the local industry. RoboCalc, its results and its goals, were extensively discussed. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Workshop for industry |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Workshop involving key industry players in robotics. Discussions influenced our work and created opportunities for further collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/circus/RoboCalc/2015/11/Kick-off-meeting |
| Description | YorRobots Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | More than 100 researchers and industrialists working in the area of robotics attended a one-day exhibition involving talks, posters, and demonstrations of work carried out in the University of York and in industry around the UK. There was plenty of opportunity for discussion and engagement. I have presented the results and the vision for RoboCalc and RoboTest, and beyond. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://www.york.ac.uk/yorrobots/news-events/yorrobots-events/2020/exhibition-2020/ |
| Description | YorRobots Industry Exhibition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Two talks and two posters. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | YorRobots launch event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was an afternoon event organised for scientists across nine departments of the university: Computer Science, Electronic Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Environment, Music, Law, Philosophy, and Mathematics. We presented our work, and as a result created a network of scientists in robotics at York. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.york.ac.uk/yorrobots/ |
| Description | women+@DCS seminar on Software Engineering for Robotics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This activity supports the effort at the University of Sheffield to engage women in science. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://sites.google.com/sheffield.ac.uk/womendcs/ |