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robotics simulation platform teams

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Specola tool measures robot behavior against detailed rules in simulation

SPECOLA: A Tool for Specification Driven Robot Evaluation

Abstract: Simulation benchmarks are a useful way to measure progress in robotics; typically they provide success rate as the dominant measure of performance. However, success rate reports only whether a rollout completed the task, hiding by what margin it succeeded, how sensitive the success is to goal parameter changes, requirements it may have violated, and whether success persisted. Signal Temporal Logic (STL) provides a formal language for capturing specifications; it can be used to define requirements, and measure how close a robot behavior is to satisfying or violating them. Using STL monitors in a simulator, however, requires exposing simulator state and mapping it to specification-relevant signals. We present Specola, a tool for evaluating robot behaviors in simulation with respect to STL specifications. Specola provides an interface for writing specifications over simulator signals, and creates and manages the relevant monitors while a policy executes. We provide a Python API and command-line interface for integrating monitoring into existing policy execution loops. We provide an adapter interface for connecting new simulators, and provide adapters for nine simulation environments and benchmarks, including LIBERO, RoboCasa, Isaac Lab, and RoboDojo. We provide case studies that illustrate the nuanced evaluation that Specola enables. Code and adapters are available at https://github.com/specola-eval/specola.

Mon 26 OctRoboticsFormal Languages and Automata Theory
The gist
Robots are usually tested by whether they complete a task, but that misses important details about how well or safely they do it. The authors created Specola, a tool that checks robot actions against detailed rules written in a formal logic called Signal Temporal Logic (STL). This lets people see exactly how close a robot was to failing or breaking rules during simulated runs. Specola works with many popular simulators and helps give a clearer picture of robot performance.
Open → 2610.35730v1