The goal of developing autonomous systems is for machines to operate safely in complex situations. Scenarios as virtual use cases can support the development of such cyber-physical systems, as for example autonomous air vehicles. Based on scenarios, verbally described test cases can be formalised in such a way as to function as machine-readable inputs at the human-machine interface to support technology development.
For the user-friendly and traceable creation of standardised scenarios, in the ADACORSA project we have developed a format based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), complemented by an editor with graphical user interface. The technical implementation of the scenario format includes a scenario definition file that describes scenario building blocks, a specialised behaviour tree that triggers and monitors the logical and temporal succession of events, user-provided files such as 3D models, as well as user-defined scripting to define the behaviour of arbitrary actors. An API (application programming interface) library enables the translation of scenario scripts into code specific to the target application.
A main goal of this work is to automate the setup and execution of realistic simulations of drone missions in a virtual environment, considering especially the U-Space framework for airspace integration. The scenario format will be validated using relevant test cases. The code will be published as open source software for the robotics and drone communities to aid the development of safe autonomous air vehicles.
This project has received funding from the SESAR Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 891166. https://modus- project.eu/
