Page 84 - Australian Defence Magazine October 2019

PACIFIC
AI
environment, the complexity of the op- erational environment, and technology of autonomous agents that can perceive, think and act.
Let’s unpack this; going back to a defini- tion of a system: “a system is a delimited collection of interacting entities”. In this concise definition, every word highlights an important attribute. First, we must have more than one entity, and these entities in- teract with one another. The interactions can be through exchange of energy as it is the case of physical systems, or through the exchange of information.
The word “delimited” is fundamental to understand autonomy. By delimited, we mean that there is a separation, a bound- ary, between what is considered to be part of a system and what is not. What it is ex- cluded is called the system’s environment – the rest of the universe.
This delimitation can be clearly defined, like for example when we consider the econ- omy of Australia as a system, in which case there is clear geographical boundary that separates the entities that form the Austra-
lian economy from those in the rest of the world. In other examples, this delimitation may be conceptual; something useful for a description or analysis. This can be the case when we analyse the thermodynamic efficiency of a ship’s diesel-generator and separate it from the rest of the atmosphere.
The delimitation between system and environment is key for autonomy, and to see this we further need to partition the en- vironment into two: operational and inter- ventional. The operational environment one refers to the natural interactions between the system and its surroundings; for example, in the case of autonomous surface ship, the operational environment can encompass weather, sea state, depth, visibility, obstacles, sensor and actuators heath, cyberattacks by other entities, etc. As the autonomous system interacts with the operational environment, certain system behaviours are exhibited.
The interventional environment, on the other hand, refers to the potential for humans and other autonomous systems to exert interventions that can change the system behaviours.
Then, when we talk about autonomy, we talk about
• The nature of the interventional envi-
ronment;
• The complexity of the operational envi-
ronment;
• The autonomous agent capability (sens-
ing, thinking, and acting).
Any autonomous system can be de- scribed by the interrelation of these three components. Interventions can range from launch and forget to human inter- vention in anomalous conditions (human on the loop) to Human-remotely-operated machines (human in the loop). The nature of the interventional environment defines the degree of interaction through which we can effect significant changes to the system behaviours.
Managing complexity
The complexity of an operational envi- ronment can change with the weather, sharing the operational space with other autonomous systems or with human-oper- ated machines, and in the case of military
TARGETED PROTECTION
Complete range of coatings solutions
Deck coatings that provide superior safety durability
Low Solar Absorbing coatings reduce energy output required for cooling
84 | October 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au