The development of intelligent robotic systems, both now and in the future, will require greatly enhanced capabilities in the areas of perception, reasoning, information management and action. The innovations needed in these areas will depend primarily on the development of improved software components, software connectivity and software architectures. This need is further emphasized by the increasing adoption of modular, open source and open data contributions, both within the research community and in industry. Many important research contributions concern the analysis of the correctness, robustness or reliability of algorithms and conceptual formulations of robot capabilities. Relatively few companies are concerned with design and analysis of the quality and reliability of the software that supports the implementation of these capabilities.

Safety – the protection of people from physical harm – has always been an important key element in robotics. Security has become an urgent requirement for robots in recent years. In particular, the protection of subsystems that implement software functions for secure operation is critical. As robotics technology advances and becomes more permeated by general-purpose computing technologies, a third /"S/" emerges in addition to safety and security: software (quality). More and more functions of robots are implemented using modern software techniques, which also entails the disadvantages of complex software systems. On the other hand, this also enables the use of software verification techniques to strengthen the safety and security features along with the robot's business functionality.

In this talk we explore the robot safety and security landscape and key standards and guidelines. Approaches that aim to bridge the gap between practical software engineering, program verification and safety evaluation applicable in robotics will be put forward. We then highlight where software quality is critical to ensuring safe robots, and discuss research activities that indicate where modern software engineering techniques can be used in the future to improve robot safety and security.

Benjamin Breiling is a robot engineer at the Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics of JOANNEUM RESEARCH. He obtained his master's degree in applied computer science from the Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt. His research interests include robot security and robot software engineering.
Michael Rathmair is head of the ROBOTICS evaluation Lab competency center at JOANNEUM RESEARCH ROBOTICS. He graduated with a PhD degree from the Vienna University of Technology and focuses his research activities on verification, validation and testing of safety-critical systems.

Please take the opportunity to connect and share this video with your friends and family if you find it helpful.