Autonomous systems are advanced intelligent systems and general AI technologies triggered by the transdisciplinary development in intelligence science, system science, brain science, cognitive science, robotics, computational intelligence, and intelligent mathematics. AS are driven by the increasing demands in the modern industries of cognitive computers, deep machine learning, robotics, brain-inspired systems, self-driving cars, internet of things, and intelligent appliances. This paper presents a perspective on the framework of autonomous systems and their theoretical foundations. A wide range of application paradigms of autonomous systems are explored.