Autonomous Aircraft (UAVs) Need to Exercise Reason

2007-02-11T11:12:00.000-06:00

The US Government wants robots to fight their battles (most technically advanced countries are considering the development of autonomous armies). Anyone can purchase a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) on the open market today. What remains the challenge is to create the control system that will define where it goes and what it does and how it does it. The FAA is concerned with how these UAVs will participate in the same air space with commercial piloted aircraft. In military situations, when they (the UAVs) start shooting at people, there will be some people who will want to know why they did (or did not) shoot at specific targets.

One obvious objective of UAVs is to be able to fly from one point to another. This can be facilitated with GPS navigation systems, or the like. It is a more complex objective to have the UAVs navigate around unexpected obstacles (weather conditions, undocumented building, mountains, or other aircraft).

When a human is piloting a plane, that human is constantly watching radar or looking out the windows for other air traffic or hazardous weather conditions. The pilot considers what the obstacles are, where they are, and how/if they should be avoided.

The human pilot considers the capabilities of his/her aircraft and balances the different alternatives to choose the most appropriate action. The pilot considers “general” advice from the FAA (NOTAMs) about how to react to different situations. Each of the alternatives may have different benefits and at the same time will likely have some negative attributes. Some of the drivers may be conflicting; safety versus time, for instance. What is safe enough? In a military situation, there may be consequences for delaying a mission. What about the impact of fuel? Diverting around a large storm may take a long time, resulting in a failed mission. And when deciding on how to avoid the aircraft, the pilot will “assume” the other pilot does the “expected” maneuver. However, the human pilot will attempt to recover, even if the other pilot makes a mistake.

The use of some form of artificial intelligence is required to make judgmental decisions for these autonomous aircraft. I would suggest that it would be ineffective, or impossible, to attempt to “script” solutions to all (or even many) of these judgmental types of situations. These are not decisions about whether to do one thing or another; but “how much”.

A technology like Compsim’s KEEL^® (Knowledge Enhanced Electronic Logic) Technology may be the best approach for defining auditable, executable policies that can control these UAVs.

Blog Objectives

2007-02-11T08:01:00.000-06:00

The objective of this blog will be to identify problems (of organizations or of devices) that can be (or need to be) addressed with intelligent devices or services.

Because we feel that these intelligent activities cannot be addressed effectively with "conventional rules" alone, we will discuss problems that can benefit from additional reasoning, such as the reasoning that can be defined and exploited with Compsim's KEEL^® Technology.

Artificial Intelligence Opportunities

Autonomous Aircraft (UAVs) Need to Exercise Reason

Blog Objectives