Autonomous Systems Workshop: Legal/Regulatory Aspects and V&V – 22 February 2016

Organised by the EPSRC’s Network on the Verification and Validation of Autonomous Systems, we held a one-day workshop, bringing together experts on regulations and standards relating to autonomous systems with those developing verification and validation techniques.

There are many different regulatory and standards frameworks that will be affected by increasing “autonomy” in systems, vehicles, or robots.  There are also many different verification and validation techniques being developed in universities, aiming to tackle this new dimension.

This workshop brought together experts from across these organisations to discuss and highlight the most appropriate directions, both for the immediate future and in the longer term.  To ensure that new techniques being developed will eventually be practical enough to be useful in a regulatory context, academics need input from regulators.  In general, the systems that will be employed in the future can “autonomously” do anything the human operator/driver/pilot could have done, so how would regulators wish to assess whether this software is actually doing what is required?

Workshop – slides are available by clicking on the presentation titles below:

TIME	TOPIC	SPEAKER
9:30	Start/introduction	Michael Fisher, University of Liverpool
9:40-11:15	Regulation/certification short talks (15 mins) Future Air Regulation	Mike Gadd, Civil Aviation Authority
	Autonomous Robotics in the Nuclear Industry	Andrew White, Office for Nuclear Regulation
	Autonomous systems, railway regulation and standards – In the pursuit of good questions?	Vaibhav Puri, Rail Safety and Standards Board
	BSI Standardisation Efforts in RAS	Steven Cameron, British Standards Institution
	Safety of Future Autonomous Vehicles	Austen Okonweze, Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles
11:30	Discussion: common problems/opportunities in future autonomous system regulation/certification
12:30	LUNCH
13:30	V&V background short talks (15 mins) Certification Challenges in the V&V of Bayesian Networks for Safety Critical Fault Diagnosis in Aerospace Systems	Mark Douthwaite, University of York
	Formal  Analysis of Railway Signalling Data	Alexei Iliasov, Newcastle University
	High-fidelity Simulation as a Route to Certification	Mike Jump,  University of Liverpool
	Sheffield Field Robotics Facility	Sandor Veres, University of Sheffield
	Harwell Robotic Autonomy Facility (presentation cancelled)	Roger Ward, SciSys
15:00	Discussion: directions/opportunities in V&V for future autonomous systems regulation/certification
16:00	Workshop finish
16:00	EPSCR balancing capability	Miriam Dowle/Diane Howard
17:00	Network  Steering Group meeting

Venue:

University of Liverpool in London
33 Finsbury Square
London
EC2A 1AG