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Main Authors: Diller, Jonathan, Barnes, David, Bogdanoff, Rebekah, Collier, Rhett, Collins, Roddy, Fieldhouse, Keith, Gefen, Yonatan, Johnson, Cameron, Kodali, Anuriha, Kriel, Brad, Murali, Varun, Niehaus, James, Sukharev, Mish, VanPelt, Joseph, Hoogs, Anthony, Kumar, Vijay, Basharat, Arslan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.18423
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author Diller, Jonathan
Barnes, David
Bogdanoff, Rebekah
Collier, Rhett
Collins, Roddy
Fieldhouse, Keith
Gefen, Yonatan
Johnson, Cameron
Kodali, Anuriha
Kriel, Brad
Murali, Varun
Niehaus, James
Sukharev, Mish
VanPelt, Joseph
Hoogs, Anthony
Kumar, Vijay
Basharat, Arslan
author_facet Diller, Jonathan
Barnes, David
Bogdanoff, Rebekah
Collier, Rhett
Collins, Roddy
Fieldhouse, Keith
Gefen, Yonatan
Johnson, Cameron
Kodali, Anuriha
Kriel, Brad
Murali, Varun
Niehaus, James
Sukharev, Mish
VanPelt, Joseph
Hoogs, Anthony
Kumar, Vijay
Basharat, Arslan
contents As autonomous systems grow more advanced, objective metrics to evaluate their ethical and legal compliance are critical for informing end users of their limitations and ensuring accountability of those who misuse them. Current ethical embodied AI frameworks remain mostly qualitative, focusing on system design (through safety guardrails or targeted red teaming), and the realized guardrails often directly disallow unsafe behavior without providing the user with an override or interpretable reason. Instead, there is a need for computable metrics through rigorous testing that allow a user to determine the applicability of the system to the task. To address this gap, we introduce the Reference Ethical Benchmark for Autonomy Readiness (REBAR), a quantitative test and evaluation framework for autonomous systems. REBAR maps operating metrics into a computable Autonomy Readiness Level (ARL) rubric that can quantify ethical performance. Key innovations of the framework include a neuro-symbolic Large Language Model (LLM) approach to calculate and explain the ethical difficulty of scenarios, LLM-driven at-scale generation of test instances, and a versatile, photorealistic simulation environment. By evaluating white-box autonomy solutions through this rigorous testing pipeline, REBAR delivers an objective and repeatable benchmark score, bridging the gap between abstract principles and verifiable, accountable autonomy.
format Preprint
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institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle REBAR: Reference Ethical Benchmark for Autonomy Readiness
Diller, Jonathan
Barnes, David
Bogdanoff, Rebekah
Collier, Rhett
Collins, Roddy
Fieldhouse, Keith
Gefen, Yonatan
Johnson, Cameron
Kodali, Anuriha
Kriel, Brad
Murali, Varun
Niehaus, James
Sukharev, Mish
VanPelt, Joseph
Hoogs, Anthony
Kumar, Vijay
Basharat, Arslan
Robotics
Computers and Society
As autonomous systems grow more advanced, objective metrics to evaluate their ethical and legal compliance are critical for informing end users of their limitations and ensuring accountability of those who misuse them. Current ethical embodied AI frameworks remain mostly qualitative, focusing on system design (through safety guardrails or targeted red teaming), and the realized guardrails often directly disallow unsafe behavior without providing the user with an override or interpretable reason. Instead, there is a need for computable metrics through rigorous testing that allow a user to determine the applicability of the system to the task. To address this gap, we introduce the Reference Ethical Benchmark for Autonomy Readiness (REBAR), a quantitative test and evaluation framework for autonomous systems. REBAR maps operating metrics into a computable Autonomy Readiness Level (ARL) rubric that can quantify ethical performance. Key innovations of the framework include a neuro-symbolic Large Language Model (LLM) approach to calculate and explain the ethical difficulty of scenarios, LLM-driven at-scale generation of test instances, and a versatile, photorealistic simulation environment. By evaluating white-box autonomy solutions through this rigorous testing pipeline, REBAR delivers an objective and repeatable benchmark score, bridging the gap between abstract principles and verifiable, accountable autonomy.
title REBAR: Reference Ethical Benchmark for Autonomy Readiness
topic Robotics
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.18423