Agentic Vehicles for Human-Centered Mobility: Definition, Prospects, and Synergistic Co-Development with Vehicle Autonomy

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yu, Jiangbo, Frank, Raphael, Miranda-Moreno, Luis, Jafarnejad, Sasan, Manzolli, Jonatas Augusto, Liu, Fuqiang, Wang, Jiyao, Eslami, Ali
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Yu, Jiangbo
Frank, Raphael
Miranda-Moreno, Luis
Jafarnejad, Sasan
Manzolli, Jonatas Augusto
Liu, Fuqiang
Wang, Jiyao
Eslami, Ali
author_facet Yu, Jiangbo
Frank, Raphael
Miranda-Moreno, Luis
Jafarnejad, Sasan
Manzolli, Jonatas Augusto
Liu, Fuqiang
Wang, Jiyao
Eslami, Ali
contents Autonomy, from the Greek autos (self) and nomos (law), refers to the capacity to operate according to internal rules without external control. Autonomous vehicles (AuVs) are therefore understood as vehicular systems that perceive their environment and execute tasks with minimal human intervention, consistent with the direction indicated by the SAE levels of automated driving. However, recent research and deployments increasingly showcase vehicular capabilities that, while not contradicting autonomy, are not entailed by it, including ambiguous goal handling, purposeful social engagement, external tool use, proactive problem solving, continuous learning, and context-sensitive reasoning in unseen and ethically salient situations, enabled in part by multimodal language models. These developments reveal a gap between technical autonomy and the broader social cognitive functions required for human-centered mobility, which are more precisely captured by the notion of agency. Therefore, rather than adding increasingly elaborate modifiers to "autonomous," we introduce agentic vehicles (AgVs) and suggest that autonomy and agency are intertwined but conceptually distinct: if autonomy concerns what to do and how to do it (task executions under internal rules), agency pertains to why to do it and what else can be done (goal-directed, adaptive actions). We present autonomy and agency as orthogonal yet synergistic dimensions with co-development implications. Vehicle agency marks a novel dimension of mobility service intelligence, heralding vehicles as purposeful actors in society.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_04996
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Agentic Vehicles for Human-Centered Mobility: Definition, Prospects, and Synergistic Co-Development with Vehicle Autonomy
Yu, Jiangbo
Frank, Raphael
Miranda-Moreno, Luis
Jafarnejad, Sasan
Manzolli, Jonatas Augusto
Liu, Fuqiang
Wang, Jiyao
Eslami, Ali
Computers and Society
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Computation and Language
Human-Computer Interaction
Robotics
Autonomy, from the Greek autos (self) and nomos (law), refers to the capacity to operate according to internal rules without external control. Autonomous vehicles (AuVs) are therefore understood as vehicular systems that perceive their environment and execute tasks with minimal human intervention, consistent with the direction indicated by the SAE levels of automated driving. However, recent research and deployments increasingly showcase vehicular capabilities that, while not contradicting autonomy, are not entailed by it, including ambiguous goal handling, purposeful social engagement, external tool use, proactive problem solving, continuous learning, and context-sensitive reasoning in unseen and ethically salient situations, enabled in part by multimodal language models. These developments reveal a gap between technical autonomy and the broader social cognitive functions required for human-centered mobility, which are more precisely captured by the notion of agency. Therefore, rather than adding increasingly elaborate modifiers to "autonomous," we introduce agentic vehicles (AgVs) and suggest that autonomy and agency are intertwined but conceptually distinct: if autonomy concerns what to do and how to do it (task executions under internal rules), agency pertains to why to do it and what else can be done (goal-directed, adaptive actions). We present autonomy and agency as orthogonal yet synergistic dimensions with co-development implications. Vehicle agency marks a novel dimension of mobility service intelligence, heralding vehicles as purposeful actors in society.
title Agentic Vehicles for Human-Centered Mobility: Definition, Prospects, and Synergistic Co-Development with Vehicle Autonomy
topic Computers and Society
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Computation and Language
Human-Computer Interaction
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04996