The main goal of this research is to investigate new methods intended to increase the degree of driving automation of autonomous vehicles operating in realistic conditions, in both on-road and o-road environments. Safe driving in an urban, extra-urban, or, in general, uncertain environments requires the continuous combination of three important complementary functions: (i) interpretation of the surrounding environment (sense), (ii) evaluation of safe-driving plans taking into account the risk of collision or unsafe driving according to the characteristics of the scene, including any moving participants (plan), (iii) action, considering the outputs of the two previous tasks and involving an on-line reactive navigator able to avoid any choices leading to probabilistically inevitable collisions in the near future (act).