A Non-Contextual Method for Determining the Degree of Autonomy to Develop in a Mobile Robot

With the increasing robotic systems complexity and applications, autonomy has become an indispensableability. To successfully replace human skilled workers, robots have to be equipped with an appropriate degree of autonomyto achieve their intended tasks. As of this writing, there are no internationally agreed upon qualitative metrics and method for measuring autonomy in mobile robotic systems. Several metrics and frameworks have been proposed over the past two decades, but these methods are contextual-task and/or environment dependent, subjective or measure level of autonomy which is a discrete valued property with limited measurement resolution. This paper examines the existing methods and draws on this experience to propose a set of measurement attributes and a behavior-based non-contextual method for assessing the degree of autonomy of mobile robotic systems.