Autonomy: a review and a reappraisal

[RoboGuy]

For most robot builders, one of the important goals is trying tobuild robots that are autonomous. This is a difficult thing to do andit's hard to get people to agree if has been done at all yet. This is because, like so many things associated with robotics:intelligent, emotion, consciousness; we use the words without agreeingor even knowing what they mean. A new paper written by Tom Froese,NathanielVirgo, and EduardoIzquierdo of the University of SussexCognitive Science department tackles the problem of autonomy. The paper,titled "Autonomy:a review and a reappraisal" (PDF format), tries to make someprogress towards defining what it means for a biological or engineeredsystem to be autonomous. It also draws a distinction between behavioralautonomy and constitutive autonomy. The paper looks at both the originof the word and reviews the current meanings assigned in the fields ofAI, artificial life, congnitive science, and robotics.

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