The Road to Autonomy: A Systematic Review Through AI in Autonomous Vehicles

In the last decade, the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with autonomous vehicles (AVs) has transformed transportation, mobility, and smart mobility systems. The present study provides a systematic review of global trends, applications, and challenges at the intersection of AI, including Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), and autonomous vehicle technologies. Using data extracted from Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science Core Collection and a set of specific keywords related to both AI and autonomous (electric) vehicles, this paper identifies the themes presented in the scientific literature using thematic maps and thematic map evolution analysis. Furthermore, the research topics are identified using both thematic maps, as well as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and BERTopic, offering a more faceted insight into the research field as LDA enables the probabilistic discovery of high-level research themes, while BERTopic, based on transformer-based language models, captures deeper semantic patterns and emerging topics over time. This approach offers richer insights into the systematic review analysis, while comparison in the results obtained through the various methods considered leads to a better overview of the themes associated with the field of AI in autonomous vehicles. As a result, a strong correspondence can be observed between core topics, such as object detection, driving models, control, safety, cybersecurity and system vulnerabilities. The findings offer a roadmap for researchers and industry practitioners, by outlining critical gaps and discussing the opportunities for future exploration.