Ontological perspectives for autonomy performance

Abstract

Goals must be assigned for any unmanned system's (UMS) operation before the system's autonomous performance can be measured. This paper reports the early results of construction of an ontology for mission goals that could serve as a template for stating the goal. The Autonomy Levels for Unmanned Systems (ALFUS) Framework is a key element in the ontology. In other words, we design the goal ontology in terms of mission, environment, and operator interaction aspects. We also leverage a collection of related efforts to further evolve the goal ontology, including the Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) robots requirements set, the Perception System for Dynamic Manufacturing, and an extension to the NIST-participated Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Spoken Language Communication and Translation System for Tactical Use (TRANSTAC) project.