Autonomy, Australia. A Cognitive Model of Situated Autonomy

Abstract. We introduce situated autonomy and present it as part of the process of action selection. We then discuss the cognitive ingredients of situated autonomy and derive a degree of situated autonomy. 1 Situated Autonomy and Action Selection Autonomous agents have been defined to be agents with self-generated goals using the agent’s motivations [4]. Such agents perform action selection, which is the function of selecting the most relevant and meaningful action [9], entirely for selfish reasons [7]. We believe circumstances of everyday agents provide opportunities for reasoning about relative levels of autonomy. Instead of being autonomous in the general sense, we will focus on the notion of autonomy in the context of a situation and in a team with other agents. We will consider agents able to perform autonomy considerations very fast while they are in the situation. Imagine in a game of basketball, the agent who is in the midst of running anticipates a block and reflects about whether to pass the ball or to run with it. Here, autonomy is a split-second situated assessment. 1 The player considers choosing each of the behaviors “pass th