An Approach for continuous Verification of Formal System Requirements in Robot-based Machinery

Flexible automation of production processes requires highly dynamic and agile approaches for verifying the system’s performance, safety and security requirements. In this paper, we present an approach to formalizing system requirements as a machine-readable specification and furthermore present methods to use such specifications for continuous machine self-verification. The vision of that approach is to define a specific acceptable operation range around the intended use of a robot-based application. This shall enhance operational flexibility and modifiability and continuously monitor whether a production system is inside its specification range even in unforeseeable situations that are not covered by risk assessment during the development phase. We discuss how and under which conditions formal specifications and continuous system verification may significantly benefit flexible operation of robotbased machinery in industrial production applications.