Robot Proficiency Self-Assessment Using Assumption-Alignment Tracking

While the design of autonomous robots often emphasizes developing proficient robots, another important attribute of autonomous robot systems is their ability to evaluate their own proficiency. A robot should be able to assess how well it can perform a task before, during, and after it has attempted the task. How can autonomous robots be designed to self-assess their behavior? This article presents the assumption-alignment tracking (AAT) method for designing autonomous robots that can effectively evaluate their own performance. In AAT, the robot a) tracks the veracity of assumptions made by the robot's decision-making algorithms to measure how well these algorithms fit, or align with, its environment and hardware systems, and b) uses the measurement of alignment to assess the robot's ability to succeed at a given task based on its past experiences. The efficacy of AAT is illustrated through three case studies: a simulated robot navigating in a maze-based (discrete time) Markov chain environment, a simulated robot navigating in a continuous environment, and a real-world robot arranging blocks of different shapes and colors in a specific order on a table. Results show that AAT is able to accurately predict robot performance and, hence, determine robot proficiency in real time.