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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Robot. AI
Sec. Computational Intelligence in Robotics
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frobt.2024.1363281
This article is part of the Research Topic Robotics Software Engineering View all 3 articles

Composable and Executable Scenarios for Simulation-Based Testing of Mobile Robots

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 University of Bremen, Bremen, Bremen, Germany
  • 2 Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
  • 3 Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (H-BRS), Sankt Augustin, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
  • 4 Department of Computer Science, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Sankt Augustin, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
  • 5 KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Few mobile robot developers already test their software on simulated robots in virtual environments or sceneries. However, the majority still shy away from simulation-based test campaigns because it remains challenging to specify and execute suitable testing scenarios, that is, models of the environment and the robots' tasks. Through developer interviews, we identified that managing the enormous variability of testing scenarios is a major barrier to the application of simulation-based testing in robotics. Furthermore, traditional CAD or 3D-modelling tools such as SolidWorks, 3ds Max, or Blender are not suitable for specifying sceneries that vary significantly and serve different testing objectives. For some testing campaigns, it is required that the scenery replicates the dynamic (e.g., opening doors) and static features of real-world environments, whereas for others, simplified scenery is sufficient. Similarly, the task and mission specifications used for simulation-based testing range from simple point-to-point navigation tasks to more elaborate tasks that require advanced deliberation and decision-making. We propose the concept of composable and executable scenarios and associated tooling to support developers in specifying, reusing, and executing scenarios for the simulation-based testing of robotic systems.Our approach differs from traditional approaches in that it offers a means of creating scenarios that allow the addition of new semantics (e.g., dynamic elements such as doors or varying task specifications) to existing models without altering them. Thus, we can systematically construct richer scenarios that remain manageable. We evaluated our approach in a small simulation-based testing campaign, with scenarios defined around the navigation stack of a mobile robot. The scenarios gradually increased in complexity, composing new features into the scenery of previous scenarios. Our evaluation demonstrated how our approach can facilitate the reuse of models and revealed the presence of errors in the configuration of the publicly available navigation stack of our SUT, which had gone unnoticed despite its frequent use.

    Keywords: verification and validation, testing, robot software engineering, Model-based development, mobile robot, navigation

    Received: 30 Dec 2023; Accepted: 04 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ortega Sainz, Parra, Schneider and Hochgeschwender. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Argentina Ortega Sainz, University of Bremen, Bremen, 28359, Bremen, Germany
    Samuel Parra, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg (H-BRS), Sankt Augustin, 53757, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
    Sven Schneider, Department of Computer Science, Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Sankt Augustin, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
    Nico Hochgeschwender, University of Bremen, Bremen, 28359, Bremen, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.