Fatema Alhani: Master's Thesis Defense

 

In safety-critical environments, it is crucial to have a backup strategy the system can turn to when facing a potentially unsafe situation. Run-time assurance provides a reliable methodology as a backup strategy. This work introduces a new framework for Run-time assurance, by generating trajectories in real-time using an optimal trajectory generation algorithm, then tracking the trajectory using transverse dynamics to design a feedback control law tailored for each trajectory generated. The generated trajectories are treated as safety backup trajectories that are only executed and followed by the plant if deemed necessary by the Run-time assurance logic. By using the Run-time assurance mechanism the system’s safety is ensured regardless of the behavior of the primary controller for the system with some constraints on the system. The framework assumes full knowledge of the environment and the system dynamics, while treating the trajectory generation part as a black box.