Vice President of Autonomous Systems, Vecna Teehnologies

In this thesis, we argue that autonomous robots operating in hostile and uncertain environments can improve robustness by computing and reasoning explicitly about risk. Autonomous robots with a keen sensitivity to risk can be trusted with critical missions, such as exploring deep space and assisting on the battlefield. We introduce a novel, risk-minimizing approach to program execution that utilizes program flexibility and estimation of risk in order to make runtime decisions that minimize the probability of program failure. Our risk-minimizing executive, called Murphy, utilizes two forms of program flexibility, 1) flexible scheduling of activity timing, and 2) redundant choice between subprocedures, in order to minimize two forms of program risk, 1) exceptions arising from activity failures, an