Evaluation of autonomy in recent ground vehicles using the autonomy levels for unmanned systems (ALFUS) framework

  • Authors:

  • George T. McWilliams;Michael A. Brown;Ryan D. Lamm;Christopher J. Guerra;Paul A. Avery;Kristopher C. Kozak;Bapiraju Surampudi

  • Affiliations:

  • Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX;Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX;Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX;Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX;Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX;Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX;Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX

  • Venue:
  • PerMIS '07 Proceedings of the 2007 Workshop on Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Over the last few decades, the field of unmanned systems (UMSs) has begun to emerge into a variety of markets. The military has already deployed unmanned air, sea, and ground vehicles. Universities and other research institutions have developed semi-autonomous passenger vehicles that have driven on highways in the U.S. and abroad. The National Aeronautics and Space Administrations (NASA) has developed unmanned rovers that have been navigating the planet Mars for several years. Even the transit and commercial freight market has developed programs for unmanned vehicles research to help solve complex logistics issues. In order to compare the capabilities of unmanned systems in such a wide variety of markets, the Autonomy Levels for Unmanned Systems (ALFUS) framework has been established in a series of workshops. While this framework is still under some development, it can be used in its current state to compare unmanned systems. In this paper, we highlight some of the major accomplishments made in the field of ground vehicle autonomy in particular. We then map the capabilities of these ground vehicles to the ALFUS framework and summarize the resulting trends that occur from this mapping.