Guest Editors' Introduction: Special Issue on Autonomous Systems Design

Fueled by the progress of artificial intelligence, autonomous systems become more and more integral parts of many Internet-of-Things (IoT) and cyber-physical systems (CPSs) applications, such as automated driving, robotics, avionics, and industrial automation. Autonomous systems are self-governed and self-adaptive systems that are designed to operate in an open and evolving environment that has not been completely defined at design time. However, this does not come for free. The advance from established systems technology to autonomous systems is not an issue of developing and introducing new functions in existing design processes. We firmly believe, and will elaborate, that it will have a deep impact on engineering, on the way we design, verify, test, and operate systems. We must find ways to keep high engineering standards, such as dependability and controllability, when allowing the system to change its behavior in the field. In other words, the future of autonomous systems is not only an issue of systems intelligence, but depends on our capability to design them responsibly.