SURVIVABILITY OF ONBOARD COMPUTERS OF GROUND ROBOTS

Abstract

Research in the field of creating specialized computing systems for robots is conducted in
many world scientific centers, including our country. The development of capabilities of sensor systems,
global navigation systems, growth of computing power and improvement of algorithms allow
creating onboard computing systems with broad intellectual capabilities. An important, but unsolved
problem remains in the equipping of such computing systems with domestically produced microprocessors.
An urgent direction in the development of prospective robot control systems is the development
of high-performance on-board computers with the property of survivability. A significant but
unresolved issue remains in the equipping of such computers with computer equipment of domestic
development. The appearance of modern domestic microprocessors Elbrus-2S3 and Elbrus-8SV
opens up new opportunities for robot developers. The emergence of hardware technologies such as a
watchdog timer and a time-binding module makes it possible to create robots with high survivability
in combat conditions. For special purpose robots, it is possible to divide the period of normal operation
of the robot into modes by analogy with the degrees of combat readiness of the armed forces, for
each of which the robot will operate in a special mode. The modes are characterized according to the
prevailing situation and the corresponding failure rate. The paper presents a threat model for the
harshest of the operating modes. This paper presents a method for ensuring the survivability of onboard
robot computers by using adaptive redundancy to ensure the survivability of on-board computers.
The method consists in switching between redundancy schemes to ensure high performance
while maintaining sufficient reliability, depending on the current level of failure flow. Using the model
developed by the authors, an experimental study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the
developed method when working with a domestic onboard computer based on the Elbrus microprocessor.
Using the developed method made it possible to increase the average functionality of the
robot by 23-43% compared to the mode with constant redundancy.