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Articles

Vol. 1 No. 4 (2026)

Verifiable ROS2 Navigation Execution with Runtime Contracts under Dynamic Obstacle Uncertainty

Submitted
September 9, 2026
Published
September 23, 2026

Abstract

The deployment of autonomous robotic systems in highly unstructured environments necessitates navigation frameworks that can guarantee safety and reliability in the presence of dynamic obstacle uncertainty. While the second generation of the Robot Operating System provides a robust middleware foundation for complex robotic applications, the default navigation stack often lacks formal safety guarantees during execution. This paper presents a comprehensive methodology for integrating runtime verification contracts into the navigation execution pipeline to monitor and enforce safety invariants dynamically. By defining formalized pre-conditions, post-conditions, and system invariants related to spatial separation and velocity limits, the proposed system continuously monitors the states of the robot and its surrounding dynamic obstacles. When uncertainties such as sudden pedestrian movements or unmapped environmental changes occur, the runtime contracts evaluate the compliance of the current local trajectory against predefined safety specifications. If a violation is anticipated, the system autonomously triggers predefined recovery behaviors to mitigate collision risks. Extensive simulations were conducted to evaluate the overhead and efficacy of the contract monitors. The results demonstrate that the inclusion of runtime contracts significantly reduces collision rates in highly dynamic scenarios with marginal computational latency, thereby providing a verifiable and robust navigation solution for autonomous agents operating under high uncertainty.

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