Autonomous Robots: Criteria, Navigation, and Impact

Definition and examples of autonomous robots

An autonomous robot is a robot that performs behaviors or tasks without recourse to human control. The article describes autonomy in terms of key capabilities: self-maintenance (e.g., sensing internal status such as battery level and returning to a charging station), sensing the environment (exteroception using sensors like sound, touch, temperature, chemical sensing, and range/altitude), task performance (carrying out physical work, from simple navigation to conditional behaviors such as security responses), and autonomous navigation (localizing itself and moving point-to-point indoors and outdoors using mapping, localization, and sensor fusion). Examples span multiple domains. Historic and space examples include W. Grey Walter’s early autonomous robots (Elmer and Elsie) and Mars rovers such as Spirit/Opportunity and later systems like the Rosalind Franklin rover and NASA’s Sample Return Robot Challenge rover Cataglyphis, which demonstrated fully autonomous navigation and sample return using sensor fusion rather than GPS. Modern general-use examples include self-driving vacuums and cars, hospital and security robots (e.g., HelpMate and CyberMotion), and airport/security-capable robots such as Seekur. The topic also covers military autonomous robots, especially lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), which can search for and engage targets under programmed constraints, typically with human oversight in current systems (as of the article’s timeframe).

0/2 modes complete

Self-maintenance and proprioception

0/2 modes complete