High-level control methods for autonomous systems

Systems that can change their behavior in response to unanticipated events during operation are called autonomous. Autonomous systems are playing an increasingly important role in both civilian and military applications. The central characteristics of autonomous systems are their abilities to sense, to learn, and to control the environment in which they operate. Based on a layered autonomy model, research on high-level control methods is conducted in this paper. At the highest level of the autonomy model, either adaptive or robust control can be used to interact with uncertain, unstructured and dynamic environments. Their possible implementations and future research directions are discussed as well.