  Our lives have been immensely improved by decades of automation research --
we are more comfortable, more productive and safer than ever before. Just
imagine a world where familiar automation technologies have failed. In that
world, thermostats don't work -- you have to monitor your home heating system
manually. Cruise control for your car doesn't exist. Every elevator has to have
a human operator to hit the right floor, most manufactured products are
assembled by hand, and you have to wash your own dishes. Who would willingly
adopt that world -- the world of last century -- today? Physical systems --
elevators, cars, home appliances, manufacturing equipment -- were more
troublesome, ore time consuming, less safe, and far less convenient. Now,
suppose we put ourselves in the place someone 20 years in the future, a future
of autonomous systems. A future where transportation is largely autonomous,
more efficient, and far safer; a future where dangerous occupations like mining
or disaster response are performed by autonomous systems supervised remotely by
humans; a future where manufacturing and healthcare are twice as productive per
person-hour by having smart monitoring and readily re-tasked autonomous
physical agents; a future where the elderly and infirm have 24 hour in-home
autonomous support for the basic activities, both physical and social, of daily
life. In a future world where these capabilities are commonplace, why would
someone come back to today's world where someone has to put their life at risk
to do a menial job, we lose time to mindless activities that have no intrinsic
value, or be consumed with worry that a loved one is at risk in their own home?
In what follows, and in a series of associated essays, we expand on these
ideas, and frame both the opportunities and challenges posed by autonomous
physical systems.
