Dependability of Autonomous Mobile Systems
Jan Rdiger, Achim Wagner, Essam Badreddi · InTech eBooks · 2008
There exist numerous non-formal definitions for dependability (see Carter, 1982; Laprie, 1992; Badreddin, 1999; Dubrova, 2006; Avizienis et al., 2004a just to name a few). When applying those non-formal definitions to a specific system the resulting dependability measure usually is only valid for this specific system and only in rare cases transferable to a family of equal systems. Small changes in the system or environment, however, render those measurements usually useless when it comes to measuring or even comparing the dependability of different systems. Autonomous mobile robots are often described by their behaviour. This aspect was utilized in this chapter for the definition of dependability in a behavioural context in order to obtain an easy to apply and computable formula for the dependability of systems. Since this