A deontic implementation of adjustable autonomy for command and control of robotic assets

Abstract

This paper describes a system for implementing adjustable autonomy levels in simulated unmanned vehicles using an approach based upon the fields of deontics and Joint Intention Theory (JIT). It discusses Soar Technology's Intelligent Control Framework research project (ICF), the authors' use of deontics in the creation of adjustable autonomy for ICF, and some possible future directions in which the research could be expanded. Use of deontics and JIT in ICF has allowed us to define system-wide formal limits on the behavior of the unmanned systems controlled by ICF, to increase the flexibility of our adjustable autonomy system, and to decrease the granularity of the autonomy adjustments. This set of formalisms allows the unmanned system maximal autonomy in the default case, while allowing the user and supervisory agents to constrain that autonomy in situations when necessary. Unlike more strictly layered adjustable autonomy formalisms, our adjustable autonomy formalism can be used to restrict subsets of autonomous behaviors, rather than entire systems, in response to situational requirements.