Design and Engineering Issues

3.8. Summary

In this chapter, we have identified and discussed several important issues in designing and engineering an AOC system. Generally speaking, an autonomous entity in an AOC system contains several common functional modules for sensing information, making decisions, and executing actions. Three phases are involved in developing AOC systems for achieving various objectives. The engineering steps in these phases can differ from one system to another in terms of human involvement, depending on our knowledge about problems or systems at hand. Moreover, we have identified several key features and attributes in an engineered AOC system, such as locality and amplification. We have discussed some important performance characteristics as well as determining factors in its performance.