Regulating the Autonomous Ocean

The rapid rise in aerial drone use and the future deployment of self-driving cars have both spurred extensive legal and social debate. Autonomous vessels on the ocean, on the other hand, have largely escaped detailed scrutiny, even as they are reshaping the landscape of human interactions with the ocean and creating novel challenges for national and international legal regimes. Autonomous vessels are being captured while spying on other countries, raising concerns about national security and surveillance regimes. The Coast Guard is using enforcement loopholes to justify abandoning many of their autonomous vessels at sea, in flagrant violation of national and international environmental laws. Even the most basic threshold questions, like whether autonomous vessels should be legally considered vessels, are unsettled. In short, the regulatory landscape governing autonomous vessels is a mess. Updating autonomous vessel regulations is essential for supporting the $1.5 trillion global maritime economy. This article evaluates the advent of autonomy at sea and proposes principles for regulating autonomous vessels moving forward. By looking broadly at the diverse ways in which autonomous vessels are changing ocean uses, this article shows how autonomous vessels are challenging existing regulatory frameworks and exploiting governance gaps. While the US and international communities are in the early stages of major new efforts to regulate robotics at sea, these efforts are primarily focused on paving the way for large autonomous cargo ships to be deployed in the 2030s and 2040s. In the meantime, a wide array of smaller autonomous vessels are already common on the world’s oceans, and, in many cases, operating in governance gaps that implicate major environmental, safety, and surveillance concerns. This article proposes concrete principles for regulating autonomous ocean-going vessels moving forward, drawing on analogous regulatory processes developed to govern aerial drones and other types of robotics

An autonomous satellite architecture integrating deliberative reasoning and behavioural intelligence

This paper describes a method for the design of autonomous spacecraft, based upon behavioral approaches to intelligent robotics. First, a number of previous spacecraft automation projects are reviewed. A methodology for the design of autonomous spacecraft is then presented, drawing upon both the European Space Agency technological center (ESTEC) automation and robotics methodology and the subsumption architecture for autonomous robots. A layered competency model for autonomous orbital spacecraft is proposed. A simple example of low level competencies and their interaction is presented in order to illustrate the methodology. Finally, the general principles adopted for the control hardware design of the AUSTRALIS-1 spacecraft are described. This system will provide an orbital experimental platform for spacecraft autonomy studies, supporting the exploration of different logical control models, different computational metaphors within the behavioral control framework, and different mappings from the logical control model to its physical implementation

Lethal Autonomous Weapons: Designing War Machines with Values

Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWs) have becomes the subject of continuous debate both at national and international levels. Arguments have been proposed both for the development and use of LAWs as well as their prohibition from combat landscapes. Regardless, the development of LAWs continues in numerous nation-states. This paper builds upon previous philosophical arguments for the development and use of LAWs and proposes a design framework that can be used to ethically direct their development. The conclusion is that the philosophical arguments that underpin the adoption of LAWs rather than not, although prima facie insufficient, can be actualized through the proposed Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approach. Hence, what is proposed is a principled design approach that can be used to embed stakeholder values into a design, encourage stakeholder cooperation and coordination and as a result promote social acceptance of LAWs as a preferable future fact of war

A motion system for social and animated robots

This paper presents an innovative motion system that is used to control the motions and animations of a social robot. The social robot Probo is used to study Human-Robot Interactions (HRI), with a special focus on Robot Assisted Therapy (RAT). When used for therapy it is important that a social robot is able to create an "illusion of life" so as to become a believable character that can communicate with humans. The design of the motion system in this paper is based on insights from the animation industry. It combines operator-controlled animations with low-level autonomous reactions such as attention and emotional state. The motion system has a Combination Engine, which combines motion commands that are triggered by a human operator with motions that originate from different units of the cognitive control architecture of the robot. This results in an interactive robot that seems alive and has a certain degree of "likeability". The Godspeed Questionnaire Series is used to evaluate the animacy and likeability of the robot in China, Romania and Belgium