Robots Autonomy: Some Technical Challenges

Robots autonomy has been widely focused on in the newspapers with a trend towards anthropomorphism that is likely to mislead people and conceal or disguise the technical reality. This paper aims at reviewing the different technical aspects of robots autonomy. First we propose a definition allowing to distinguish robots from devices that are not robots. Then autonomy is defined and considered as a relative notion within a framework of authority sharing between the decision functions of the robot and the human being. Several technical issues are mentioned according to three points of view: (i) the robot, (ii) the human operator and (iii) the interaction between the operator and the robot. Some key questions that should be carefully dealt with for future robotic systems are given at the end of the paper.