Systems and methods are provided for controlling an autonomous vehicle (AV). A map generator module processes sensor data to generate a world representation of a particular driving scenario (PDS). A scene understanding module (SUM) processes navigation route data, position information and a feature map to define an autonomous driving task (ADT), and decomposes the ADT into a sequence of sub-tasks. The SUM selects a particular combination of sensorimotor primitive modules (SPMs) to be enabled and executed for the PDS. Each one of the SPMs addresses a sub-task in the sequence. A primitive processor module executes the particular combination of the SPMs such that each generates a vehicle trajectory and speed (VTS) profile. A selected one of the VTS profiles is then processed to generate the control signals, which are then processed at a low-level controller to generate commands that control one or more of actuators of the AV.