Autonomy Measures for Robots

Published

November 1, 2004

Author(s)

Hui-Min Huang, Elena R. Messina, R C. Wade, W English, B Novak, James S. Albus

Abstract

Robots are becoming increasingly autonomous. Yet, there are no commonly accepted terms and measures of just how autonomous a robot is. An ad hoc working group has been formed to address these deficiencies, focusing on the unmanned vehicles domain. This group is defining terminology relevant to autonomous systems and is devising metrics for autonomy levels of unmanned systems. Autonomy definitions and measures must encompass many dimensions and serve many audiences. An Army General making decisions about deployment of unmanned scout vehicles may want to only know a value on a scale from 1 to 10, whereas test engineers need to know specifics about the types of environments and missions that the vehicles are expected to deal with. Any system will have to communicate with humans, hence this is an important dimension in evaluating autonomy. The autonomy levels for unmanned systems (ALFUS) group is therefore developing a metric based on 3 principal dimensions: task complexity, environmental difficulty, and human interaction. This paper reports on the current state of the ALFUS metric for evaluating robots.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division - 2004

Volume

73

Issue

No. 2

Conference Dates

November 13-19, 2004

Conference Title

IMECE International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

autonomy, human-robot interaction, Performance Metrics, robotic vehicles, standards, task analysis, unmanned systems

Citation

Huang, H. , Messina, E. , Wade, R. , English, W. , Novak, B. and Albus, J. (2004), Autonomy Measures for Robots, Proceedings of the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division - 2004, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=824514 (Accessed April 19, 2024)