There are various definitions of autonomous agent. According to Brustoloni (1991)
According to Maes (1995)
Franklin and Graesser (1997) review different definitions and propose their definition
They explain it
Lee et al. (2015) post safety issue from how the combination of external appearance and internal autonomous agent have impact on human reaction about autonomous vehicles. Their study explores the humanlike appearance agent and high level of autonomy are strongly correlated with social presence, intelligence, safety and trustworthiness. In specific, appearance impacts most on affective trust while autonomy impacts most on both affective and cognitive domain of trust where cognitive trust is characterized by knowledge-based factors and affective trust is largely emotion driven [1]
. Ron Sun . Duality of the Mind: A Bottom-up Approach Toward Cognition . Lawrence Erlbaum . September 1, 2001 . New Jersey . 304 . 978-0-585-39404-6 .