Autonomy-assessment criteria for underwater vehicles

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are getting progressively sophisticated by increasing their self-governance capabilities which allow them to deal with more and more complex missions. However, there is still not a common agreement on the aspects that should be evaluated to know what level of autonomy AUVs provide. This paper reviews the current approaches to assess autonomous behavior in self-governed vehicles. It recaps the capabilities and perspectives taken into account as aspects to evaluate autonomy in unmanned systems from different domains. This provides the foundations to develop and propose assessment criteria for AUVs. This paper also proposes potential metrics for undersea autonomy in order to determine the degree of autonomy in AUVs. A case study based on a generic AUV is presented to show how the autonomy-assessment criteria for underwater vehicles can be applied.