Editorial: Driving into Future with Reliable, Secure, Efficient and Intelligent MetaVehicles

Welcome to the sixth issue of the IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica (JAS) in 2023! In the first issue in 2023, I briefly discussed about MetaVehicles, a technological expression of intelligent vehicles, robotics, AI, blockchain, knowledge automation, networking and communication [1]. As the concept of the Metaverse continues to evolve and expand, the range of vehicle entities is diversely enlarged, including passenger vehicles, heavy duty vehicles, rail vehicles, marine vehicles, aerial vehicles, and other types of transportation. The development and use of MetaVehicles are likely to become more sophisticated. Therefore, from a systems and control perspective, new methods of control, estimation and optimization should be developed to achieve the improved vehicular control system stability and reliability in the physical space, guaranteed security in the cyber space, promising efficiency in both communication and control layers, and enhanced intelligence in both control and decision-making processes. Achieving these objectives requires advanced vehicular control and communication systems that can detect and respond to physical faults/failures and cyber threats, optimize control and communication performance, provide comfortable and convenient driving experiences, minimize emissions, and interact with a wide range of other vehicles and infrastructure.