Rapid evolution of mobile robotic technology is witnessed with the fact that unmanned vehicles have begun to be fielded in many problem areas ranging from homeland security, battlefield support, to Mars exploration. Military and civilian agencies continue to expand the roles that unmanned systems (UMS) may serve. As Government agencies continue to specify UMS capabilities for future applications, there are increasing demands for a facilitating common framework. The demands include common terminology for characterizing the UMS requirements and standard metrics for evaluating the autonomy of the UMS. Individual government agencies have begun the efforts toward building facilitating frameworks. The Department of Defense Joint Program Office (JPO), the U.S. Army Maneuver Support Center, and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have, in separate but related efforts, described levels of robotic behaviors for the Army Future Combat Systems (FCS) program [1, 2, 3]. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has established an Autonomous Control Levels (ACL) [4] scale. The Army Science Board has described a set of levels of autonomous behavior [5]. Central to these efforts is the concept of autonomy levels for the UMS. It is extremely beneficial that these and other agencies leverage each other's efforts and aim at a government and industry wide consistent and standard approach.
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