AUTONOMOUS CONTROL OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS: ROBOTIC APPLICATIONS**This work was supported, in parts, by NASA Grant number NCCW-0087This paper represents a set of applications of soft computing approaches to complex systems such as mobile robots, flexible arm, etc. The structure of the paper is as follows: Section 2 gives a brief introduction into autonomy through soft computing. Section 3 introduces two notions of sensory fusion and rule hierarchy. Section 4 constitutes a few applications of autonomous control for complex systems through soft computing approaches. Conclusions are described in Section 5.