A fully autonomous system can: a) gain information about the environment, b) work for an extended period without human intervention, c) move either all or part of itself throughout its operating environment without human assistance and d) avoid situations that are harmful to people, property, or itself unless those are part of its design specifications.
Key technologies of autonomous systems are overviewed, notably: mission planning and control, perception and intelligence, embedded computing, swarm systems, communications and societal technologies. Several autonomous system applications are presented, notably a) autonomous cars, b) drones and drone swarms, c) autonomous underwater vehicles d) autonomous marine vessels and e) autonomous robots.