The 2008 TUB-SJTU joint workshop on “Autonomous Systems – Self-Organization, Management, and Control” was held on October 6, 2008 at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. The workshop, sponsored by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Technical University of Berlin brought together scientists and researchers from both universities to present and discuss the latest progress on autonomous systems and its applications in diverse areas. Autonomous systems are designed to integrate machines, computing, sensing, and software to create intelligent systems capable of interacting with the complexities of the real world. Autonomous systems represent the physical embodiment of machine intelligence. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to theory and modeling for autonomous systems; organization of autonomous systems; learning and perception; complex systems; multi-agent systems; robotics and control; applications of autonomous systems.