Although autonomous functioning facilitates deployment of robotic systems in domains that admit limited human oversight on our planet and beyond, finding correspondence between task requirements and autonomous capability is still an open challenge. Consequently, a number of methods for quantifying autonomy have been proposed over the last three decades, but to our knowledge all these have no discernment of sub-mode features of variation of autonomy and some are based on metrics that violet the Goodhart's law. This paper focuses on the full autonomous mode and proposes a task-requirements based autonomy assessment framework. The framework starts by establishing robot task characteristics from which three autonomy metrics, namely requisite capability, reliability and responsiveness, and functions for determining autonomy as a two-part measure, namely of level of autonomy and degree of autonomy are derived. These characteristics are founded on the realization that robots ultimately replace human skilled workers, to find a mapping between human job and robot task characteristics. The distinction between level and degree of autonomy stemmed from the acknowledgment that autonomy is not just a question of existence, but also one of performance of requisite capability. When continuously monitored, the proposed metrics provide a means of monitoring the integrity of a system. The framework has been demonstrated on two case studies, namely autonomous vehicle at an on-road dynamic driving task and the DARPA subT challenge rules analysis. The framework provides not only a tool for quantifying autonomy, but also a regulatory interface and common language for autonomous systems developers and users.

翻译：尽管自主功能使得机器人在地球及太空中允许有限人类监督的领域得以部署，但任务需求与自主能力之间的对应关系仍是一个开放挑战。过去三十年间，虽有多项自主性量化方法被提出，但据我们所知，这些方法均未能辨别自主性变化的子模式特征，且部分方法基于违背古德哈特定律的指标。本文聚焦于全自主模式，提出一种基于任务需求的自主性评估框架。该框架首先建立机器人任务特征，据此推导出三项自主性度量指标——必要能力、可靠性与响应性，并定义自主性双维度测量函数：自主等级与自主程度。这些特征基于"机器人最终替代人类技术工人"的认知，旨在建立人类职业与机器人任务特征间的映射关系。自主等级与程度之区分源于以下共识：自主性不仅是"是否存在"的问题，更是"必要能力表现"的命题。通过持续监测，所述指标可提供系统完整性监控手段。该框架已在两个案例中得到验证：自主车辆道路动态驾驶任务与DARPA SubT挑战赛规则分析。本框架不仅提供自主性量化工具，更为自主系统开发者和用户建立了监管接口与通用语言。