Summary

This chapter has provided an overviews of autonomous systems (ground, airborne, marine, space), the initial framing of expectation functions for autonomy, the governance structures into which autonomy must operate, an overview of the validation and verification mechanisms used to support these governance structures, and finally an overview of autonomy in each of the physical domains.

In the subsequent chapters, we will delve deeper into these topics with a framing informed by autonomy abstractions as shown in the figure below. At the “bottom” of these abstractions are the physical objects such as the mechanical devices and the associated electronics hardware. Layered above the electronics hardware layer are various software layers which start with middleware/infrastructure, algorithmic layers, and finally the connection to humans.

These topics will be addressed at the conceptual level and also examined in specific fashion for the four physical domains (example figure below).