Ethical Control of Unmanned Systems and Robots

Project Motivation: ethically constrained control of unmanned systems and robot missions by human supervisors and warfighters.

Precept: well-structured mission orders can be syntactically and semantically validated to give human commanders confidence that offboard systems will do what they are told to do, and further will not do what they are told not to do.

Project Goal: apply Semantic Web ontology to scenario goals and constraints for logical validation that human-approved mission orders for robots are semantically coherent, precise, unambiguous, and without internal contradictions.

Long-term Objective: demonstrate that no technological limitations exist that prevent applying the same kind of ethical constraints on robots and unmanned vehicles that already apply to human beings.

Abstract. Ethical human supervision of unmanned maritime systems is foundational in future undersea warfare. Forward deployed unmanned systems in the human-machine team must comply with their Commander's intent throughout the duration of their existence in future Undersea Warfare - in which harsh physical domains, long distance from the Commander, and prolonged time on-station stress the capabilities of the unmanned systems and limit their operator's control. Therefore, in order to apply ethical control of unmanned systems in future undersea warfare, we develop an ontology for unmanned systems mission execution and design. We study four canonical missions for unmanned maritime systems with progressive sophistication in order to test and evaluate Ethical Control design on the autonomy of the unmanned systems. The goals of our research are to ensure unmanned maritime systems comply with existing policy guidance of the U.S. Department of Defense and relevant international organizations, and provide inputs to emerging policy guidance. Our vision is for Commanders to be confident in authorizing life-saving or lethal force from unmanned systems that operate under ethical control in collaboration with human forces. Ultimately, "Ethical Control leads to better warfighting." Simulation playback of multiple key scenarios demonstrates these principles in action.

• Ethical Control of Unmanned Systems public website
• Ethical Control of Unmanned Systems overview presentation
• Ethical Control flyer and IEEE Journal Paper blog post
• EthicalControlArchive.zip (90MB) provides full website for download

Related Work: this research supports Network Optional Warfare (NOW) strategies for deliberate, stealthy, minimalist tactical communications.

Investigators. Don Brutzman, Curt Blais, Bob McGhee and Duane Davis.

Contact: Don Brutzman, brutzman@nps.edu