The biology and technology of intelligent autonomous agents

This book treats the problem of building intelligent autonomous agents. Biology is taken as a major source of inspiration. The book is based on an extraordinarily successful NATO Advanced Study Institute at which leading proponents of the new behavior-oriented approach to artificial intelligence met to establish a solid scientific foundation for the field of intelligent autonomous agents. The meeting was an extraordinary event because it featured not only very high quality lectures but also robot laboratories set up by the AI labs of the MIT and the University of Brussels. The book has three parts. Part 1 consists of papers based on lectures given at the institute, Part 2 of papers based on presentations made or experiments conducted at the institute, and Part 3 of shorter contributions.