Unit 13: Autonomous Behavior and Planning

Autonomy is not "the robot does it by itself"

Autonomy is a structured chain of estimation, decision, control, monitoring, and recovery.

Autonomy Is Structured Decision-Making separates mission goals from low-level commands. Reactive Behavior vs Planned Behavior compares short-horizon response with future-aware planning. Design an Autonomous Mission adds the failure transitions that happy-path diagrams leave out.

Every transition needs evidence

Your Unit artifact is a mission state graph with success, stop, and recovery transitions.

For each important transition, write what observation makes it legal. A timer is not proof that an object was acquired. A route command is not proof that localization remains valid.

Failure belongs in the mission design

Include at least one deliberate failure case and the expected safe behavior.

The mission does not count as successful if it reaches the final location by violating a boundary, losing required state, or ignoring a stop condition.

Simulation is the preferred core environment because it lets you repeat failure cases deliberately.