Systems Challenges for Trustworthy Embodied Systems

A new generation of increasingly autonomous and self-learning systems, which we call embodied systems, is about to be developed. When deploying these systems into a real-life context we face various engineering challenges, as it is crucial to coordinate the behavior of embodied systems in a beneficial manner, ensure their compatibility with our human-centered social values, and design verifiably safe and reliable human-machine interaction. We are arguing that raditional systems engineering is coming to a climacteric from embedded to embodied systems, and with assuring the trustworthiness of dynamic federations of situationally aware, intent-driven, explorative, ever-evolving, largely non-predictable, and increasingly autonomous embodied systems in uncertain, complex, and unpredictable real-world contexts. We are also identifying a number of urgent systems challenges for trustworthy embodied systems, including robust and human-centric AI, cognitive architectures, uncertainty quantification, trustworthy self-integration, and continual analysis and assurance.