# 1.1 Autonomous systems

Any autonomous system has three fundamental aspects: sensing the environment using sensors, reasoning through logic and information processing, and then interacting with the environment through actuators. Together, these are known as the sensing–logic–actuation cycle, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 The sensing–logic–actuation control cycle for autonomous systems

Each of the three aspects of the sensing–logic–actuation cycle will be discussed briefly here.

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