Jeremy Straub Department of Computer Science University of North Dakota

 Introduction  Background  Applications Requiring Humans ◦ Prospective Applications ◦ Requirement Source  Autonomous Control  Goal-Based Autonomy  Human Collaboration  Integrated System  Pathway to Implementation ◦ Technical ◦ Social, Legal & Ethical Considerations  Conclusions & Future Works

 Partial autonomous control approaches are poised to provide benefit to the warfighter  The approach combines: ◦ Scalability of autonomous control ◦ Specialized skills and abilities that humans are either particularly well suited to or which control software hasn’t been created for.  A collaborative control approach is discussed, it combines: ◦ goal-based autonomy ◦ human assistance ◦ teleoperation capabilities  Goals ◦ to maximize system efficiency through the use of autonomous control wherever possible ◦ maximize task completion and accuracy through human support or control, as required

 Robotic sensing and weapons platform control technologies fall into two categories; however, the boundaries of these are blurring ◦ The First presumes complete robot system autonomy in achieving goals and completing tasks assigned by controllers. ◦ The second presumes that human control (or at least supervision) is required  The control of multiple robots by humans, however, presents a particular challenge due to the necessity to concurrently assess and command these robots.

 The prospective applications for unmanned craft (teleoperated or autonomous) are numerous.  Applications include: ◦ intelligence ◦ surveillance and reconnaissance missions ◦ munition location and disablement missions ◦ military attack/defense operations ◦ rescue missions ◦ search and rescue operations  Robots are able to facilitate activities in remote areas, harsh environments and constrained spaces  Teleoperation facilitates attaining these benefits while still allowing the missions to benefit from human knowledge and judgment.

 From a moral perspective, Sauer and Schornig site Kahn in arguing that “a soldier’s right to kill his or her opponents depends on the condition of mutual risk”.  Human judgment is also required for ethical decision making (though Sauer and Schornig suggest that in the longer-term, artificial intelligence systems may be act in a “more ‘humane’ fashion” than humans.  Technically-dictated need: ◦ identification of targets in non-warfare applications ◦ system goal setting and/or tasking ◦ valuable intuition-based guidance

 Autonomous control, when a suitable solution, is highly desirable.  Completely autonomous systems do not require human operators (and the associated expense).  They can be controlled by local software (either onboard or in-region) preventing the need maintain expensive long-distance communications channels and reducing the potential for the system to fail or be compromised due to communications channel failure or compromise.  Autonomous control can take several forms: ◦ Script ◦ Script with error handling capabilities ◦ Adaptive planning ◦ goal-based autonomy  With goal-based autonomy, the AI is given the programmatic tools needed to determine what actions are required to complete a set of goals. Controllers supply initial goals and refine them as necessary. The system creates and refines an operations plan, based upon the supplied (and updated, if applicable) goals.

 With goal-based autonomy the controller sends a high level goal in a goal definition language that is analyzed and decomposed by the AI.  The AI, considering current operating conditions, situational knowledge and other factors develops an optimized plan for the performance of tasks required to meet these decomposed goals.  Dependencies for these tasks are identified and an optimized schedule for their performance is created.  Management by exception can be used to validate whether each prospective task has been suitably successful.  If an exception is found to exist, the system attempts to determine if it can be fixed by the system (without requiring human intervention).

 Many tasks can be performed successfully by an AI without human intervention.  Some (e.g., object recognition in a chaotic environment)are beyond the current capabilities of software systems.  Others or may be possible, but infeasible with the hardware capabilities available onboard the craft or in the operating region.  In these cases, human involvement can expedite task completion and increase accuracy and system performance.  The previous system is now presented augmented with human involvement  Enhancements: ◦ validation process that occurs after scheduling; clarification from controllers is sought to resolve validation failure, if applicable ◦ addition of task types that require human intervention  Each task is evaluated to determine whether human input is required. If input is required, it is sought from human controllers  the system attempts to resolve the exception autonomously  if this fails, human input is sought; this allows more complex task exceptions to be effectively resolved

 it is necessary to consider how multiple instances of the collaborative control process work in conjunction with each other.  Several approaches have been utilized in other work: ◦ security-monitoring-style approach where the controller has multiple screens (or multiple windows) and attempts to watch all of the craft concurrently, scanning for irregularities ◦ approaches where the controller switches between the craft regularly, checking for issues resolving them with commands and moving to the next screen. ◦ autonomously identify and prioritize situations which require the controller’s input and present these to him or her

 Work is required on a variety of fronts to facilitate the use of teleoperated and autonomous craft in more battle scenarios  Technical challenges range from specific focus areas ◦ such as the development of technology that rivals human performance in target identification  to more general concerns ◦ such as ensuring that human values are properly implemented in robotic decision making systems.  Keeping humans in-the-loop: ◦ emotional effects of remote warfighting on human participants ◦ enhancing training (or providing autonomous decision making support, etc.) to facilitate better decision making about craft and human operator capabilities ◦ understanding human perception and how to improve human situational awareness when commanding a remotely controlled craft

 Sauer and Schomig suggest that a plethora of social, ethical and legal considerations must be evaluated when contemplating remotely controlled vehicles and their further advancement. ◦ The effect on the conduct of war must be considered:  reduced the threshold to engage in combat ◦ The impact of teleoperation on the rules of war and what is considered acceptable must be considered:  attacks upon civilian areas may be provoked in response to unmanned craft conflict. ◦ Lack of risk to the operators of unmanned vehicles (who are far removed from the war) removes the right, born from “mutual risk” to harm or kill enemy combatants  the impact that these actions (if perceived as unfair by craft operators) will have on operators’ mental state. ◦ Utilization of autonomous control technology may create a spiral driving further autonomy.  each side would realize the comparative competitive advantage and that each upgrade would trigger a virtual need by the other side to match  the prospective conclusion to this cycle may be wars initiated and fought before humans are even fully aware of them.

 This paper has provided an overview of ongoing work related to the initial design of an integrated system for controlling  Future work will involve the completion of the implementation of this system and testing to quantify the qualitative benefits from controller involvement discussed herein.  Work will also be undertaken to quantify the relative performance of the AI-driven controller software, as compared to the alternate approaches traditionally used.