A Review on Variable Autonomy of Unmanned Systems

Unmanned systems for land, sea, air, and sky will play a huge role in military and civilian fields in the future. To realize the autonomous operation ability of unmanned systems, studying the variable autonomy of unmanned systems, which among today's prevalent topics, is vital. Aimed at the autonomy problem of unmanned systems, this paper first discusses the basic concept of autonomy, as well as the classification and evaluation methods of autonomy. The paper then classifies the types of variable autonomous system of unmanned system and reviews the research status of the key technologies related to variable autonomous systems. Finally, it further discusses the existing problems and the possible research direction in the study of the variable autonomous system of unmanned system.