[2510.26905] Cognition Envelopes for Bounded Decision Making in Autonomous UAS Operations

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence arXiv:2510.26905 (cs) [Submitted on 30 Oct 2025 (v1), last revised 4 Mar 2026 (this version, v3)] Title:Cognition Envelopes for Bounded Decision Making in Autonomous UAS Operations Authors:Pedro Antonio Alarcon Granadeno, Arturo Miguel Bernal Russell, Sofia Nelson, Demetrius Hernandez, Maureen Petterson, Michael Murphy, Walter J. Scheirer, Jane Cleland-Huang View a PDF of the paper titled Cognition Envelopes for Bounded Decision Making in Autonomous UAS Operations, by Pedro Antonio Alarcon Granadeno and 7 other authors View PDF Abstract:Cyber-physical systems increasingly rely on foundational models, such as Large Language Models (LLMs) and Vision-Language Models (VLMs) to increase autonomy through enhanced perception, inference, and planning. However, these models also introduce new types of errors, such as hallucinations, over-generalizations, and context misalignments, resulting in incorrect and flawed decisions. To address this, we introduce the concept of Cognition Envelopes, designed to establish reasoning boundaries that constrain AI-generated decisions while complementing the use of meta-cognition and traditional safety envelopes. As with safety envelopes, Cognition Envelopes require practical guidelines and systematic processes for their definition, validation, and assurance. In this paper we describe an LLM/VLM-supported pipeline for dynamic clue analysis within the domain of small autonomous Uncrewed Aerial Systems depl...