“IEEE Control Systems Magazine is a very prestigious magazine,” Schierman said. Hobbs’ career is just taking off, and Schierman said she has already made a big name for herself in the runtime assurance area. “I was a contractor for about 20 years, and most of my research was on runtime assurance,” Schierman said.Įven when Hobbs moved to the Sensors Directorate, Schierman and Hobbs continued to collaborate on runtime assurance. John Schierman, senior research aerospace engineer at AFRL’s Aerospace Systems Directorate, met Hobbs when Schierman was a contractor and continued collaborating with her as he joined AFRL. The idea of the 38-page spread in the IEEE Control Systems Magazine was to capture the current state of the theory of RTA and answer questions such as what are all the different approaches? How do we categorize them? And what are some of the different spin-offs of related concepts? Hobbs added.ĭr.
“So, we can provide a higher level of assurance or proof of safety by having this safety wrapper.” “And if the AI is going to be unsafe, the RTA is able to modify or substitute a different signal that will guarantee safety,” Hobbs said. This technology may allow airplanes and spacecraft to be monitored while assessing what the AI would do next. Hobbs said she dove into the area of runtime assurance, where rather than trying to prove an AI system is going to be completely safe offline, she looked at a way to wrap AI control systems in an RTA controller. “And we're starting to see more advancements in the optimization-based runtime assurance for different scenarios.” dissertation on runtime assurance, and most of my work at that time was focused on the switching-base runtime assurance,” she added. Looking at the big picture, Hobbs reviewed what was done in the past, and state-of-the-art technologies in the field, when considering designs for the systems. You try to find something that's as close to what it wants to do as possible, while guaranteeing multiple safety constraints in an optimal way.” “There's a whole new field in optimization techniques where you consider what the primary controller would do - like the human or an AI based controller. “Some approaches, like the Auto GCAS, use switching-base runtime assurance, where we have some kind of backup control to switch to,” Hobbs said. In a fast-paced field where there is a lot of new research, Hobbs understood the importance of keeping up with the latest technology. “To me, an AI-based autonomous system was pretty much the ultimate challenge,” she said. Having worked in the autonomous controls branch from 2015-2019, Hobbs saw how very complex systems are verified and validated. She started her current team in 2020 with the intent to develop ways to assure the safety of artificial intelligence, or AI, based autonomy of air and space systems. Runtime assurance, or RTA, is used in various systems, most notably the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System, or Auto GCAS, which prevents aircraft from ground collision by automatically controlling the aircraft, saving lives and aircraft. Hobbs worked on several autonomy programs at AFRL since 2011 and has been exposed to working with various systems, such as automated air refueling Auto GCAS and Automatic Air Collision Avoidance System, or Auto ACAS, which led to her current position as the safe autonomy and space lead with the Autonomy Capability Team, or ACT3, for the Sensors Directorate at AFRL.
Kerianne Hobbs, with the Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, was the lead author of a 38-page spread in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, Control Systems Magazine, titled Runtime assurance for safety-critical systems: An introduction to safety filtering approaches for complex control systems.
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