RoboVAST: Automated Scenario-Based Validation of Robots at Scale

📅 2026-07-07
📈 Citations: 0
Influential: 0
📄 PDF
🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses the limitations of current robotic system validation, which relies heavily on manual selection of test scenarios, thereby hindering scalability and compromising reproducibility and reliability of conclusions. To overcome these challenges, this work proposes a compositional, scenario-based modeling approach that integrates declarative test specifications, plugin-driven scenario generation, containerized parallel simulation, and unified result analysis to establish the first modular and scalable automated verification framework. The framework enables systematic parameter variation across multiple dimensions and facilitates robust identification of systemic faults versus stochastic anomalies. Evaluated across 5,480 distinct scenario configurations with over 100,000 simulation runs, the approach accumulated 1,800 hours of simulated operation and 1,873 virtual kilometers, demonstrating its efficacy in discerning consistent system deficiencies from random irregularities.
📝 Abstract
Validation of robotic systems critically depends on the operating conditions under which they are assessed. Scenario selection and variation are often manual, experience-driven, and difficult to scale, which harms reproducibility and weakens validation conclusions. We propose a scenario-based methodology that models scenarios compositionally and formalizes how these dimensions are varied, instantiated, executed, and interpreted. Building on this, we introduce RoboVAST, a framework that realizes declarative campaign specifications, plugin-based scenario generation, and scalable containerized execution with integrated result analysis. We demonstrate the approach with a navigation dataset comprising 5480 scenario configurations and over 100000 execution runs across five indoor maps with varied paths, sensor noise, software parameters, and obstacle settings, totaling more than 1800 hours of simulated operation and 1873 km traveled. Twenty repetitions per configuration allow us to distinguish systematic failures from stochastic anomalies.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

robot validation
scenario-based testing
scalability
reproducibility
automated testing
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

scenario-based validation
compositional scenario modeling
declarative campaign specification
scalable containerized execution
robotic system verification
F
Frederik Pasch
Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, Germany
S
Samuel Wiest
University of Bremen, Germany
A
Argentina Ortega
University of Bremen, Germany
N
Nico Hochgeschwender
University of Bremen, Germany