A Model for Autonomous Safety Management in a Mobile Robot

This paper deals with the problem of embedding safety into an autonomous mobile robot´s behaviour. Although robot safety has long been an issue of concern, there has been little work on the contribution that autonomous behaviour can make to a robot´s safety management. An approach is hereby explored for explicit safety reasoning within the robot´s decision-making process, based on the assumption that the robot, at best, can have only partial knowledge of the robot and environment current and future states. A probabilistic model is defined, based on a robotic system´s safety analysis outcome. The model essentially represents a process of autonomous risk assessment and management of the robot´s actions