REVIEW article
Front. Robot. AI
Sec. Multi-Robot Systems
This article is part of the Research TopicRobotic Perception, Multi-Robot Exploration, Mapping, and Autonomous ComputingView all 3 articles
When AI Takes the Wheel: AI-defined Vehicles Principles and Pitfalls
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institute of Informatics and Telematics, Department of Engineering, ICT and Technology for Energy and Transport, National Research Council (CNR), Pisa, Italy
- 2Universita degli Studi di Pisa, Pisa, Italy
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As introduced by Asimov in "I, Robot", intelligent machines are characterized as systems capable of performing tasks that traditionally require human intelligence, such as autonomous decision-making and driving. In this context, modern road vehicles can increasingly be understood as robotic systems endowed with progressively sophisticated functionalities, operational flexibility, and, crucially, the capacity to learn and evolve autonomously over time. Building on this perspective, AI-defined vehicles (AIDVs) are emerging in both the automotive industry and the research community as a next stage in vehicle evolution, where interaction capabilities, adaptability, sustainability, and ethical governance are embedded as core design principles rather than treated as auxiliary features. This work aims to introduce this new class of vehicles and provide an analysis of their defining principles, capabilities, and challenges. This article contributes a first conceptualization of AIDVs, outlines their defining principles, and distinguishes them from existing vehicle classes. Then, it identifies the risks introduced by adaptive AI and proposes a preliminary roadmap for their integration into Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).
Keywords: Artificial intelligence (AI), Autonomous vehicle (AV), intelligent transportation system (ITS), Safety, security, Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X)
Received: 17 Dec 2025; Accepted: 03 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 De Vincenzi, Bodei and Matteucci. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Marco De Vincenzi
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