Dr Marie Farrell - University of Manchester

Space exploration is difficult yet important and clearly a dangerous environment for humans, so, an obvious route is to significantly increase the use of robotics. The harsh environment, distances involved, and communication issues (such as delays, disturbances) require these robotic systems to act independently. But before we can deploy autonomous robots or vehicles in space, we need a fundamental change to the way that these autonomous systems are verified and assessed. If we do not have this then engineers, governments, and companies will have little confidence that the robotic systems will do as required once autonomously deployed. Dr Farrell's aim is to devise new ways of describing, analysing, and assuring the autonomous behaviour of robotic space systems to increase this confidence. To achieve this, Dr Farrell will produce key research developments in requirements specification, heterogeneous verification, and system assurance.