UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Autonomous Systems Research at Notre Dame
Autonomous systems and autonomous vehicles in particular have captured the imagination of everyone, in recent years. It is fascinating to have machines being able to drive us around autonomously, without a human driver. In addition, the promise of reducing or even eliminating accidents via autonomy has been very appealing indeed, and more so because of the convincing marketing strategies of the world’s largest high tech and automobile companies. Furthermore, significant progress in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and in autonomous underwater and surface ships is announced daily.
Systems with high degrees of autonomy may also be found in financial systems, in politics, in companies and organizations, in biology, in addition to engineered systems. Their study and design are truly interdisciplinary as they involve a variety of disciplines in engineering, science and humanities and introduce challenging scientific, technical, security, safety, fairness, morality and ethics issues.
This website establishes a convenient portal for the research activities conducted at the University Notre Dame that are related to Autonomous Systems, the goal being to share the latest research and also encourage research collaboration and shared activities such as seminars.
An important feature of the Autonomous Systems Research at Notre Dame that is different from other science and engineering research efforts, is the integration of issues from the humanities and social sciences, law and business, beyond science and engineering in the study of autonomy, highlighting the importance of choosing wisely when developing systems with high degrees of autonomy.
Systems with lower degrees of autonomy are very common. In fact, almost any control system is an autonomous system. To develop systems with higher degrees of autonomy one needs, at least at present, methodologies from the field of AI.
Responsible use of AI has been brought up as a very important issue of our times, as there is the potential for destroying the human race, and alarms have been raised by leaders of science and society urging better control of progress in AI.However, what is important here, and very worrisome to some, is not really the development of AI methodologies, but their use to increase the level of autonomy of systems performing tasks that have the potential of threatening human life. AI methodologies by themselves are not threatening. What needs caution is the use of AI, and in fact the use of any enabling set of methodologies, in developing autonomous systems. Autonomy is the issue and not AI or its successors.
What is autonomy?
The term autonomy originated in Ancient Greek: αὐτονομία (autonomia), from αὐτόνομος (autonomos), which comes from αὐτο (auto) “self” and νόμος (nomos) “law”, hence when combined it is understood to mean one who gives oneself his/her own law. Autonomous means having the capability and authority for self-government.
Autonomous systems and autonomous vehicles in particular have captured the imagination of everyone, in recent years. It is fascinating to have machines being able to drive us around autonomously, without a human driver. In addition, the promise of reducing or even eliminating accidents via autonomy has been very appealing indeed, and more so because of the convincing marketing strategies of the world’s largest high tech and automobile companies. Furthermore, significant progress in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and in autonomous underwater and surface ships is announced daily. These are exciting times, especially for researchers in control systems.
Autonomy is not a new concept in society, in politics, in companies and organizations, in biology, to mention but a few. Autonomy in engineered systems is also not a new concept. Automatic pilots for aircrafts and ships that increase the degree of autonomy of the system, have been operating very successfully for many years – the first autopilot for aircraft was introduced in 1912.
These engineered systems are examples of accomplishments of the Quest for Autonomy, a pervasive theme in engineered systems through the centuries starting even earlier than Ktesibios’ waterclock with its feedback mechanism in the 3rdcentury BC and continuing strong today. It seems that we always wanted to build things that did more things by themselves, that served us. In fact, as it was mentioned in the works of the ancient poets Hesiod and Homer around 700BC, Hephaestus the Greek god of invention and blacksmithing had created several creatures that were accomplishing different tasks by themselves. One of them was Talos, a giant bronze man commissioned by Zeus to protect the island of Crete. As the story goes, Talos marched around the island three times every day autonomously and hurled boulders at approaching enemy ships!