{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp05_complete_proposal_portfolio20_20260803","cell_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__robotics_automation","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_id":"dwl_robotics_temporary_geofence_sunset_p04","proposal_index":4,"version":0,"title":"Evidence-Gated Sunset Review for Temporary Robot Geofences and Speed Caps","problem":"Temporary exclusion zones, one-way corridors, route blocks, and reduced-speed regions may be added to an autonomous mobile-robot map after construction, a spill, an incident, equipment staging, or uncertainty about sensing conditions. The restrictions protect workers and equipment while the hazard exists, but they can persist without an owner, review date, or affirmative finding that the underlying condition remains. A stale restriction can therefore remove usable routing capacity or impose detours without continuing to deliver its original protection. The candidate problem is silent persistence after the protected purpose has ended, not the existence of conservative robot operating limits.","actors":["Autonomous mobile-robot fleet operators","Robot safety and environmental-health-and-safety owners","Facilities and construction teams","Production and intralogistics planners","Workers sharing or crossing robot travel areas","Maintenance technicians","Robot vendors and system integrators","Authorized map and configuration administrators","Area operations managers"],"observable_state":"In one bounded operating area, the active fleet map contains a non-baseline geofence, route block, direction rule, or speed cap whose creation record identifies a temporary condition or lacks a current owner, hazard reference, review date, or renewal evidence. Physical inspection and relevant work records can determine whether the original condition remains. Route telemetry or a non-production replay can show whether the restriction changes travel distance, waiting, conflicts, task feasibility, battery use, or congestion elsewhere.","consequence":"When an obsolete restriction remains active, robots may detour, converge on fewer corridors, wait behind one another, consume additional energy, or fail to reach otherwise usable stations. Production and logistics teams may compensate with more robots, manual movement, schedule buffers, or lower service expectations. Removing a still-protective restriction, however, could expose workers or equipment to collision, visibility, floor-condition, construction, or sensing hazards, so undocumented status alone is not evidence for removal.","affected_objective":"Recover routing and task capacity blocked by obsolete operational restrictions while preserving every restriction that still controls a credible safety, equipment, accessibility, cybersecurity, or environmental hazard.","intervention":"Establish a lifecycle register and evidence-gated sunset process for non-baseline robot geofences, route blocks, one-way rules, and speed caps. Each restriction receives a stated hazard, scope, creator, accountable owner, creation evidence, classification as permanent or temporary, review date, and observable renewal criterion. At review, facilities, area operations, and an independent robot-safety reviewer inspect the physical condition and relevant records. A permanent or still-protective restriction remains. A temporary restriction whose hazard is affirmatively shown to have ended may be removed through the existing map-change and validation pathway. If status is uncertain, the robot remains constrained while the case is escalated with a new short review date; uncertainty never produces automatic unrestricted operation. Begin with a read-only inventory and route replay, followed—only if authorized—by a fixed-period pilot removing a small set of independently cleared restrictions in one area. Monitor incidents, near misses, protective stops, human incursions, route conflicts, deadlocks, travel and waiting measures, battery state, task completion, worker reports, map-version integrity, newly added restrictions, and renewals. Reapply the prior restriction immediately on a safeguard trigger.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Distortion map","domain_realization":"The wedge is the indefinite persistence of a temporary runtime constraint after its triggering condition may have ended, causing the planner to treat otherwise usable paths or operating states as unavailable."},{"archetype_element":"Blocked beneficial activity","domain_realization":"Robots cannot use a route, direction, or safe operating speed that would otherwise support feasible material movement, even when the former temporary hazard has been affirmatively cleared."},{"archetype_element":"Protected purpose","domain_realization":"Geofences and speed caps prevent robot entry or high-energy motion where workers, construction, visibility, floor conditions, equipment, or sensing limitations create credible hazards."},{"archetype_element":"Protected constraint safeguard","domain_realization":"Permanent restrictions, legally or technically required boundaries, active-hazard controls, baseline protective functions, and all restrictions with uncertain status remain in force."},{"archetype_element":"Redesign lever","domain_realization":"Attach ownership, evidence, review dates, and explicit renew-revise-retire decisions to non-baseline operational restrictions so temporary controls cannot persist solely through administrative inertia."},{"archetype_element":"Surplus estimate","domain_realization":"Estimate only the routing distance, waiting, conflicts, task infeasibility, energy, manual substitution, or capacity effects attributable to independently cleared restrictions, with uncertainty and displaced congestion reported."},{"archetype_element":"Affected-party incidence","domain_realization":"Fleet and production teams may gain routing flexibility; safety and facilities reviewers receive periodic review work; workers retain protective limits; traffic may shift toward people or equipment in corridors reopened to robots."},{"archetype_element":"Behavioral response model","domain_realization":"Monitor whether owners misclassify restrictions as temporary or permanent, allow reviews to become perfunctory, add duplicate restrictions, delay hazard remediation, or shift robot congestion and human exposure elsewhere."},{"archetype_element":"Implementation boundary and rollback","domain_realization":"Limit removals to independently inspected restrictions in one bounded area, retain existing change control and validation, preserve prior map versions, and immediately restore a restriction if protected signals deteriorate."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"distortion_reduction_review","role":"Trace each restriction to the behavior it changes and the hazard it was intended to control, separating demonstrably obsolete route loss from active or uncertain protection.","counterfactual_removal":"Without this diagnostic, missing metadata or apparent detour could be mistaken for deadweight loss even when the restriction still controls a real but poorly documented hazard."},{"mechanism_slug":"sunset_clause_review","role":"Require temporary restrictions to reach a scheduled disposition at which the owner and authorities must affirmatively renew, revise, or retire them based on current evidence rather than allow silent persistence.","counterfactual_removal":"Without scheduled re-justification, identified temporary controls can remain indefinitely because no actor bears responsibility for initiating removal."},{"mechanism_slug":"cost_benefit_assessment_protocol","role":"Compare recoverable routing and operational value with inspection, change-control, validation, traffic-shift, worker-exposure, and transition costs; stress assumptions about counterfactual routes and hazard absence.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a full welfare comparison, shorter robot routes could be treated as sufficient benefit even when risk, review burden, or congestion is merely shifted to another corridor or group."},{"mechanism_slug":"impact_assessment_table","role":"Record each restriction, affected workers and operations, current hazard evidence, expected gains and losses, uncertainty, required protection, responsible owner, and post-change trigger.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a comparable register, aggregate fleet performance could conceal concentrated worker exposure, accessibility effects, reviewer burdens, or adverse traffic changes."},{"mechanism_slug":"regulatory_simplification_pilot","role":"Contain evidence-authorized removals to one operating area and a fixed period, instrument the protected outcomes, preserve previous configurations, and require affirmative evidence for continuation.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a bounded pilot, correlated map or hazard-classification errors could affect the full fleet before displaced congestion or safety degradation becomes observable."}],"causal_chain":["A temporary hazard causes an authorized geofence, route block, direction rule, or speed cap to be added to the robot fleet map.","The restriction lacks a reliable expiry, accountable renewal decision, or linkage to current hazard evidence.","After the triggering condition ends, the restriction can persist because leaving it untouched requires no decision while removal requires investigation and approval.","The path planner continues excluding or penalizing the affected area, forcing detours, corridor concentration, waiting, energy use, infeasible tasks, or manual substitution.","A lifecycle register makes the restriction's purpose, owner, duration, and renewal evidence reviewable.","Scheduled inspection distinguishes active or uncertain protections from temporary controls whose hazards have affirmatively ended.","Only independently cleared restrictions proceed through the existing map-change and validation pathway; permanent, active, and uncertain controls remain.","Removing a cleared restriction restores feasible routing options without deliberately reducing protection, while monitored traffic and safety responses reveal displacement or hidden hazards.","If protected signals worsen or the map change behaves outside its approved boundary, the stored prior restriction is restored."],"baseline":"Non-baseline robot geofences, route blocks, one-way rules, and speed caps remain active until an operator, project owner, or manager initiates a map-change request. Metadata, ownership, hazard linkage, and review dates may vary by restriction. Existing safety approval and validation apply when a change is requested, but there is no mandatory inventory or recurring disposition process. Baseline measures include active restrictions, documented purposes, map versions, route and waiting telemetry, protective stops, incidents, near misses, worker reports, task feasibility, and manual workarounds.","nearest_rivals":["Improve fleet traffic-control or path-planning algorithms: appropriate if congestion arises despite valid restrictions, but it does not decide whether obsolete constraints should remain in the feasible route graph.","Add robots, chargers, or physical corridors: appropriate for genuine capacity shortage, but it can spend capital compensating for routing capacity stranded by stale controls.","Improve map documentation alone: reduces information friction but leaves indefinite persistence as the default and does not create an accountable renewal decision.","Remove all undocumented restrictions: may recover routes quickly but treats missing records as proof of safety and violates the protected-purpose requirement.","Install dynamic speed-and-separation monitoring: could replace some static restrictions, but it changes the safety-control architecture and is not required for reviewing hazards that no longer exist.","Repair the underlying physical hazard: the correct response when the hazard remains; this proposal removes a restriction only after the hazard has already ended or been separately remediated.","Conduct a one-time cleanup: may retire current stale controls but does not repair the persistence rule that allows new temporary restrictions to become permanent by inertia."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The proposal is warranted only where a particular non-baseline operating restriction persists after its temporary hazard has been affirmatively cleared and the restriction still changes robot behavior. Its causal repair is recurring re-justification of stale runtime constraints under unchanged safety and map-validation authority; it is not general route optimization, capacity expansion, automatic deletion of undocumented protections, or replacement of static safeguards with a new sensing system.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The robot functional-safety owner and environmental-health-and-safety owner jointly authorize removal eligibility, with confirmation from facilities and the affected area manager that the triggering condition has ended. Only an authorized map administrator may implement the approved change through existing configuration control. Operations may request review but cannot remove a restriction or override a safety decision.","authorized_first_step":"Create a read-only inventory of active non-baseline restrictions in one bounded operating area, reconstruct their stated purposes and owners, inspect candidate physical conditions, and replay routing with each independently cleared candidate removed one at a time. Do not modify a production map or robot behavior.","excluded_actions":["Removing a restriction solely because its documentation, owner, or creation ticket is missing","Changing permanent barriers, legally required zones, baseline protective functions, emergency-stop behavior, or safety-rated sensing","Allowing an expiry date by itself to enable unrestricted robot operation","Removing controls associated with active construction, spills, damaged floors, poor visibility, human-only areas, accessibility needs, unstable communications, or unresolved incidents","Combining multiple candidate removals in the first replay without isolating their effects","Using travel time or task throughput to override a safety or facilities determination","Bypassing existing map-version control, verification, worker notification, training, or deployment approval","Applying the process fleet-wide before the bounded pilot is reviewed","Deleting the prior configuration needed for rapid restoration"],"halt_rollback":"Halt further removals and restore the last approved restriction if a robot enters an unapproved area, behavior differs from the validated replay boundary, an incident or near miss plausibly relates to the change, protective stops or human conflicts worsen, displaced congestion creates a new hazard, map identity cannot be verified, worker reports reveal an overlooked condition, or a safety owner invokes stop authority. Isolate affected robots if configuration restoration cannot be verified, and require a fresh hazard review before resuming the pilot."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Restrictions that appear stale from map metadata still control hazards not evident in the original ticket, such as sight-line limitations, worker movement, floor loading, intermittent equipment staging, radio coverage, localization quality, emergency access, or prior incident conditions. In that case the documentation is stale, but the protection is not.","problem_falsifier":"The problem hypothesis fails if every reviewed restriction maps to a current or unresolved hazard, if no independently clearable restriction changes robot routing or task feasibility, or if the planner already ignores inactive temporary restrictions through a reliable lifecycle process.","intervention_falsifier":"The intervention hypothesis fails if reviewers cannot reproducibly determine hazard status, the route replay shows no feasible operational recovery, review costs exceed the bounded value under conservative assumptions, or a live removal produces out-of-bound routing, unacceptable worker exposure, safety-signal degradation, or congestion displaced to an equally costly location.","risks":["Incomplete records may conceal the true reason a restriction was created.","A physical condition may appear resolved during inspection but recur intermittently.","Removing one constraint may divert robot traffic toward workers, accessible routes, emergency paths, or fragile equipment.","Multiple restrictions may interact, making one-at-a-time route estimates misleading.","Restriction owners may renew controls automatically to avoid responsibility or retire them under production pressure.","Facilities and robot maps may use inconsistent coordinates, names, or versions.","Frequent map changes may confuse workers, operators, or maintenance staff.","Review deadlines may cluster and overload safety or facilities personnel.","Rollback commands may not propagate consistently to every robot or cached map.","Performance metrics may encourage removal while underweighting rare but severe hazards.","Temporary restrictions may be recreated under new identifiers, defeating lifecycle tracking.","The process may delay remediation if owners use repeated renewal instead of fixing a continuing physical hazard."]},"next_evidence_step":"Inventory all active non-baseline geofences, route blocks, one-way rules, and speed caps in one physically bounded operating area, capped at twenty restrictions for the first review. For each, record its map version, creation date, stated hazard, ticket, owner, intended duration, current physical condition, affected workers, and existing renewal evidence. Safety, facilities, and area operations must independently classify the condition as active, cleared, or uncertain; disagreement is classified as uncertain. For restrictions unanimously classified as cleared, replay a fixed historical task set with each restriction removed individually while preserving all other constraints, robot capabilities, traffic rules, and safety limits. Report route feasibility, travel and waiting measures, conflict locations, energy implications, displaced traffic, affected-party incidence, and sensitivity to task mix. End without changing a production map. A live pilot is ineligible unless at least one restriction is affirmatively cleared, its prior purpose is reconstructed, the existing change-control pathway accepts the proposed removal, and rapid restoration is verified.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Proposal 1 repairs nontransferable departmental reservations for a shared robot safety-validation cell. Its causal condition is simultaneous usable appointment capacity and eligible queued demand; proposal 4 neither reallocates appointments nor depends on a validation queue, but reviews persistent runtime route constraints after their triggering hazards may have ended. Proposal 2 creates a change-scoped approval path for robot software updates. Proposal 4 does not abbreviate software or map-change validation: every approved removal still follows the existing pathway. Its intervention instead creates ownership and scheduled re-justification for temporary operating restrictions, so it remains independently adoptable even if all configuration changes continue to receive complete validation. Proposal 3 redesigns the internal fee charged when a robot deployment enters. Proposal 4 leaves onboarding prices and shared-service funding unchanged and acts on already deployed fleets by retiring only affirmatively obsolete geofences or speed caps. The four proposals therefore target, respectively, appointment allocation, approval scope, project-entry pricing, and persistence of runtime constraints.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Generate one additional complete candidate at proposal index 4","Address a materially different problem from proposals 1, 2, and 3","Use a distinct sunset-review intervention and runtime-constraint causal path","Preserve active and uncertain robot safety protections","Specify authority, incidence, monitoring, rollback, falsifiers, rivals, and bounded evidence","Explain diversity from every earlier sealed proposal"],"conceptual_changes":["Initial version; located the avoidable wedge in the silent persistence of temporary robot operating restrictions after their protected purpose may have ended.","Distinguished stale runtime constraints from valid permanent or unresolved hazard controls.","Made positive hazard clearance, rather than missing documentation or elapsed time, the condition for candidate removal."],"operational_changes":["Initial version; specified a restriction lifecycle register, accountable ownership, scheduled disposition, independent physical inspection, existing map-change validation, one-area pilot scope, map-version preservation, monitoring, and immediate restoration."],"evidence_changes":["Initial version; limited first evidence to a capped read-only inventory, independent hazard classification, and one-at-a-time non-production route replay."],"claim_changes":["No novelty, prevalence, demand, or effect-size claim is made.","The candidate is conditional on observing an active behavior-changing restriction whose temporary hazard is affirmatively cleared.","Prior art remains unsearched."]}}