Interview with Christopher Chandler: closed-loop robot reactive planning

In their paper Model Checking for Closed-Loop Robot Reactive Planning, Christopher Chandler, Bernd Porr, Alice Miller and Giulia Lafratta show how model checking can be used to create multi-step plans for a differential drive wheeled robot so that it can avoid immediate danger. In this interview, Christopher tells us about model checking and how it is used in the context of autonomous robotic systems. We also find out more about the team's approach and the implementation of their method. Two major barriers for widespread adoption of autonomous driving are safety and public trust. While trust is notoriously difficult to define, it is generally accepted that transparency is essential for human interactions with safety-critical autonomous systems.