Advancements in robotic and autonomous systems have provided numerous benefits for society, paving the way for multi-robot systems (MRS). MRS consist of multiple robots that can communicate and coordinate with each other to achieve certain goals. While they offer improved performance, among other qualities, they face challenges such as from the lack of a systematic engineering methodology covering the entire life cycle of MRS. Addressing this, the EU-funded SESAME project proposes an open, modular, model-based approach for the systematic engineering of reliable MRS. The project will combine five use cases in various domains, such as dependable MRS in a battery innovation centre use case, with the research and development competences of their partners.

Objective

European strategy and research roadmap documents emphasise the significant societal and economic benefits coming from robotic and autonomous systems. Multi-Robot Systems (MRS) comprise distributed and interconnected robotic teams that can carry out tasks beyond the competency of a single robot. Although MRS offer improved scalability and performance, increased robustness, and mission enablement, the lack of a systematic engineering methodology, covering the complete engineering lifecycle and handling efficiently the salient characteristics of MRS such as openness, uncertainty, variability, and interplay of safety and security, results in solutions that fail because of fragile design and unrealistic assumptions. SESAME addresses these problems through an open, modular, model-based approach for the systematic engineering of dependable MRS. SESAME is underpinned by public meta-models, components and configuration tools supporting the dependable MRS operation in uncertain settings characterised by emergent behaviours and possible cyber-attacks. To demonstrate this timely and ambitious goal, SESAME combines five end- user-led use-cases (in the domains of healthcare, agile manufacturing, agri-food, and inspection and maintenance) with R&D competences of partners that have a long track-record in conducting cutting-edge research on robotics, model- based safety, security analysis, validation, and verification, towards the actual delivery of research results characterised by widely-used, sustainable and industrial-strength open-source software. An advisory board of world-class experts guides the development of SESAME .

More information is available on the project website.