ABSTRACT
This chapter distinguishes between autonomous and nonautonomous agents, and aims to seperate the concepts of autonomy and self-sufficiency. In everyday usage, autonomy implies freedom from outside control or self- government. Agents capable of behaviour may be controlled entirely by outside agents. The problem in designing autonomous robots is to deploy a compromise between decision making by rules and decision making by cognition. Because there will be many dimensions involved, it may be possible to rely on rules in some situations and planning in others. When an automaton, whether animal or robot, is in a particular state it obeys a particular behavioural rule. The consequences of behaviour are of three main types: those that alter the state of the robot itself, those that alter the robots environment, and those that are irrelevant. Robots designed to carry out a particular task, such as laying bricks, would probably be designed to monitor other state variables pertaining to the task.
