Autonomic
Axel Hahn
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Automated and autonomous transport systems have the potential to make an important contribution to climate protection and to overcoming social challenges in the field of mobility. In recent decades, mechanical engineering developed into a more differentiated discipline, mechatronics, with the help of control, electrical and automation technology and microelectronics until the 1990s. Since the 1990s, computer science has also played a decisive role in the development of new technologies and services, and therefore also in new business models. Since then, it has made a significant contribution to economic growth.
Unlike smartphones, for example, autonomous systems also have a direct influence on the physical world and their wide range of applications will bring about a whole new level of digital penetration in our society: Industry 4.0, autonomous driving and networked energy and healthcare systems are just a few examples of this.
Autonomics as a new key discipline
This makes it all the more important to equip autonomous systems with a high degree of trustworthiness. This requires a well-founded understanding of trust and responsibility that can be transferred to technical systems and used in development and operation. By combining the social sciences, humanities and humanities with natural and technical sciences, our aim is to create the new key discipline of "autonomics". The aim is to meet the challenges posed by the development and use of autonomous systems. The aim is to make the best possible use of the potential offered by the integration of more and more decision-making authority in machines with the help of new artificial intelligence approaches. The goals of autonomous systems are multifaceted: in addition to the global goal of sustainability, trustworthiness, quality of life and economic efficiency play a major role. Environmental pollution should be reduced, for example by using existing transport systems more efficiently. Accidents are to be avoided (reliability), greater comfort is to be created during the journey (quality of life), and resources are also to be conserved and costs and time expenditure reduced (economy).
Strengthening social trustworthiness
Technical and social trustworthiness is of crucial importance for the development and use of autonomous systems. Autonomics is intended to address precisely the questions associated with this. How can people be sure that automated and autonomous systems have been sufficiently tested? How can they be guaranteed that the systems know the solutions for all conceivable (and not yet conceivable) situations and can implement them successfully and safely? How can trust be created in the new systems? These questions pose new challenges and opportunities for autonomous systems: human-machine systems should be understood as teams in which all team members exchange information about their intentions. Methods and tools need to be developed to ensure a sufficiently high level of trustworthiness to give people a sense of security before and during their use of automated and autonomous systems. Science can make a decisive contribution here by working together with business and politics to bring together various disciplines such as social sciences, psychology, philosophy, human sciences, natural sciences and technical sciences such as physics, mathematics and computer science. There is a fundamental need for transdisciplinary approaches to mastering the complexity of human-machine systems, as well as political, economic and social issues and their solutions. These issues and challenges of highly automated and autonomous systems are addressed together in the new key discipline of autonomics.