Future Challenges for Autonomous Systems

The domain of intelligent creatures, systems and entities is suffering today profound changes, and the pace of more than a hundred meetings (congresses, conferences, workshops) per year shows there is a very large community of interest, eager of innovations and creativity. There is now no unanimity and homogeneity of the crowd, no convergence on what concerns scientific or technological goals, and recent surveys offer us strange results about the desires of industry and academy. However, observing recent conferences, we can work out some tendencies and move toward the future, yet conflicts are present concerning the aims the multiple communities pursue because some themes are relevant for several communities. Also, interleaving of areas generates points of friction between what must be done next.