Gricel Vázquez

Gricel Vázquez, Calum Imrie, Sepeedeh Shahbeigi et al.

Ensuring reliable performance in situations outside the Operational Design Domain (ODD) remains a primary challenge in devising resilient autonomous systems. We explore this challenge by introducing an approach for adapting probabilistic system models to handle out-of-ODD scenarios while, in parallel, providing quantitative guarantees. Our approach dynamically extends the coverage of existing system situation capabilities, supporting the verification and adaptation of the system's behaviour under unanticipated situations. Preliminary results demonstrate that our approach effectively increases system reliability by adapting its behaviour and providing formal guarantees even under unforeseen out-of-ODD situations.

Gricel Vázquez, Alexandros Evangelidis, Sepeedeh Shahbeigi et al.

Integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) into complex software systems enables the generation of human-understandable explanations of opaque AI processes, such as automated task planning. However, the quality and reliability of these explanations heavily depend on effective prompt engineering. The lack of a systematic understanding of how diverse stakeholder groups formulate and refine prompts hinders the development of tools that can automate this process. We introduce COMPASS (COgnitive Modelling for Prompt Automated SynthesiS), a proof-of-concept self-adaptive approach that formalises prompt engineering as a cognitive and probabilistic decision-making process. COMPASS models unobservable users' latent cognitive states, such as attention and comprehension, uncertainty, and observable interaction cues as a POMDP, whose synthesised policy enables adaptive generation of explanations and prompt refinements. We evaluate COMPASS using two diverse cyber-physical system case studies to assess the adaptive explanation generation and their qualities, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of COMPASS integrating human cognition and user profile's feedback into automated prompt synthesis in complex task planning systems.

Radu Calinescu, Calum Imrie, Ravi Mangal et al.

We present DeepDECS, a new method for the synthesis of correct-by-construction discrete-event controllers for autonomous systems that use deep neural network (DNN) classifiers for the perception step of their decision-making processes. Despite major advances in deep learning in recent years, providing safety guarantees for these systems remains very challenging. Our controller synthesis method addresses this challenge by integrating DNN verification with the synthesis of verified Markov models. The synthesised models correspond to discrete-event controllers guaranteed to satisfy the safety, dependability and performance requirements of the autonomous system, and to be Pareto optimal with respect to a set of optimisation objectives. We use the method in simulation to synthesise controllers for mobile-robot collision mitigation and for maintaining driver attentiveness in shared-control autonomous driving.