Autonomy in unmanned air vehicles

Abstract

AbstractThe paper describes a key risk area threatening the widespread deployment of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), that of attaining high levels of autonomy. Autonomy is loosely defined in the context of UAVs and the meaning of ‘level of autonomy’ discussed. The paper argues that the achievement of high levels of autonomy is not merely a function of increasing machine intelligence but also of maintaining the human operator’s engagement with the decision making process and retaining human authority. An assumption is that a human being in the loop will be a requirement for safety, flight clearance and legal reasons on early systems. Therefore, developers of highly autonomous systems are presented with a paradox. It will be argued that the human must be placed at the centre of the design process and consequently human factors, the human machine interface and the system architecture become critical to achieving high levels of autonomy. This quality impacts on the entire knowledge acquisition and design cycle and broadens what is meant by that term placing it as a discipline firmly in the systems design community. The paper concludes by outlining the key barriers to the successful development of highly autonomous UAVs.