PAI-SF / 4 / PAI-SF-AUT-004

Autonomy Handoff Integrity

Objective

Prevent ambiguous or contested control state during handoff between autonomous, human, and reduced- autonomy modes.

Control / requirement

Handoff requires explicit, authenticated confirmation of which controller holds command authority at any instant, preventing a state where both or neither believe they are in control.

Applicability

All systems supporting more than one control mode with a handoff path between them.

Expected evidence

Handoff protocol design; handoff test records covering simulated ambiguous-control scenarios. [T3]

Assurance expectation

Test evidence specifically covering edge-case handoff timing (e.g., simultaneous claim, dropped claim) rather than only the nominal handoff path.

Dependencies

PAI-SF-HOV-001 (Domain 6) for the human-side end of the handoff.

Exclusions

Not applicable to fully autonomous systems with no human handoff path at all.

Maturity / conformance relevance

Expected at all conformance levels for systems supporting mode handoff.

Ecosystem relationship

Provides handoff-failure incident categories for UAIF™; handoff ambiguity during an active incident is a AI- IRF™ investigation concern.

Domain

5. Safe-State and Degraded-Mode Behavior

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