The book presents an overview of current research on biologically inspired autonomous robotics from the perspective of some of the most relevant researchers in this area. The book crosses several boundaries in the field of robotics and the closely related field of artificial life. The key aim throughout the book is to obtain autonomy at different levels. From the basic motor behavior in some exotic robot architectures right through to the planning of complex behaviors or the evolution of robot control structures, the book explores different degrees and definitions of autonomous behavior....

The last decade of the 20th century has witnessed a surge of interest in num- ical, computation-intensive approaches to information processing. The lines that draw the boundaries among statistics, optimization, arti cial intelligence and information processing are disappearing, and it is not uncommon to nd well-founded and sophisticated mathematical approaches in application - mains traditionally associated with ad-hoc programming. Heuristics has - come a branch of optimization and statistics. Clustering is applied to analyze soft data and to provide fast indexing in the World Wide Web....