Executive summary
2014
SAE International first published J3016's six levels of driving automation
6
levels on the scale, 0 (no automation) to 5 (full automation, no human role)
Key conclusions
- Industrial equipment has no shared vocabulary for how much decision-making it holds, so the word "autonomous" ends up doing the work of a specification.
- A claimed level is a statement that can be tested, which "autonomous" is not. It prompts the question of what the defined exceptions are and how they were tested.
- Name the level you are buying and the evidence behind the claim, and review the level every time the equipment's software changes.
If you ask five vendors what 'autonomous' means for their equipment, their answers will differ, because industrial automation has no shared vocabulary for how much decision-making a machine holds. The automotive industry solved the same problem in 2014. SAE International's J3016 standard defines six levels of driving automation, from Level 0 (no automation) through Level 2 (partial automation, with a human still monitoring) to Level 5 (full automation, with no human role at all). It has been revised several times since, most recently in 2021, without changing the basic scale.
Equipment vendors are not required to adopt J3016. What it offers buyers is a method: state the level plainly, on a shared scale, so that the word 'autonomous' no longer has to serve as a specification.
J3016's levels can be mapped onto industrial equipment
| SAE level | Driving equivalent | Industrial equipment equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 1 | No automation, or driver assistance | The system recommends; a person decides and acts on everything |
| 2 | Partial automation, human still monitoring throughout | The system acts on a narrow, pre-approved set of conditions; a person supervises continuously |
| 3 | Conditional automation, human must be ready to intervene | The system acts and only escalates on defined exceptions; a person is on call |
| 4 | High automation within a defined domain | The system acts autonomously within a bounded task and environment, with no routine human step |
| 5 | Full automation, no human role | No industrial equivalent yet in general deployment; treat any vendor claiming this level as making an extraordinary claim |
The borrowed scale is useful even though it is informal
A level is a claim that can be tested, which 'autonomous' is not. If a vendor states that its system operates at the equivalent of Level 3, you can ask what the defined exceptions are, what triggers escalation and how this was tested. The automotive industry has spent a decade asking the same questions about Level 3 driving systems. Several of those systems turned out to need far more human attention than the label suggested.
To use the scale in a specification, name the level you are buying for each piece of equipment and the evidence that supports the claim. Review the level explicitly every time the equipment's software changes, because a level claimed at commissioning may not hold after the fifth over-the-air update.
