1. An autonomous system comprising: a plurality of processing nodes distributed and coupled to one another; a plurality of sensors coupled to the processing nodes; and a plurality of actuators including at least one power control actuator, at least one brake actuator, and at least one steering actuator, the plurality of actuators configured to directly control the autonomous system driven by and coupled to the plurality of processing nodes for throttle-by-wire, brake-by-wire and steer-by-wire control; wherein each processing node of the plurality of processing nodes is configured to: partition and map processing tasks between the plurality of processing nodes; merge and reduce results of individual processing tasks into an actionable table that specifies objectives comprising control values resulting from sensor fusion processing, the objectives are used to directly control the plurality of actuators for the autonomous system; and transfer a workload from one or more processing nodes determined to have a fault to one or more active processing nodes, wherein a reconfiguration of processing nodes is achieved within a bounded time.