Generalizable Robustness Testing of DNN-Based Robotic Navigation Systems via XAI-Guided Search

What happened

arXiv:2610.06862v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: **Context:** Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) increasingly control Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs), yet small input perturbations can cause unsafe system-level behavior. Aggregated Integrated Gradients guide mutations toward influential image regions.

Existing approaches often optimize perturbations for individual images and evaluate them only in simulation, limiting their generalizability and practical validity. **Objectives:** This work aims to generate robustness tests that remain effective across operational observations and to evaluate whether the resulting failures transfer from simulation to a physical robot.

**Results:** The approach achieved a median success rate of 70.0%, compared with 53.85% for unguided search, and increased median hypervolume from 0.65 to 0.73. Multi-image optimization improved the success rate from 50.0% to 57.5%, while XAI guidance further increased it to 70.0%.