# Formalizing the Execution Context of Behavior Trees for Runtime Verification of Deliberative Policies

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.12474 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12474/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 23 Jun 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Execution Semantics of Behavior Trees in Robotic Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00090/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we enable automated property verification of deliberative components in robot control architectures. We focus on formalizing the execution context of Behavior Trees (BTs) to provide a scalable, yet formally grounded, methodology to enable runtime verification and prevent unexpected robot behaviors. To this end, we consider a message-passing model that accommodates both synchronous and asynchronous composition of parallel components, in which BTs and other components execute and interact according to the communication patterns commonly adopted in robotic software architectures. We introduce a formal property specification language to encode requirements and build runtime monitors. We performed a set of experiments, both on simulations and on the real robot, demonstrating the feasibility of our approach in a realistic application and its integration in a typical robot software architecture. We also provide an OS-level virtualization environment to reproduce the experiments in the simulated scenario.