Browse Books

Reviewer: John Abel Moyne

Articles published by the author over the last 14 years, constituting what he calls the history of the development of “behavior-based robotics,” are collected in this book. This approach to AI and robotic technology “has now been widely adopted for mobile robots of all sorts on both Earth and Mars” (p. vii). The book is divided into two parts, “Technology” and “Philosophy.” The four chapters on technology deal with the technical aspects and discuss various models. The ultimate goal is for robots to operate in a world where the obstacles in their paths are not known, preprogrammed, or wired on the operating fields. The interesting descriptions of some of the models include technical details of their sequential development while wandering around unconstrained laboratories and computer machine rooms. The last chapter in this part, published in 1991, contains a summary of the work done in the previous years: “Over the last seven years a new approach to robotics has been developing in a number of laboratories. Rather than modularize perception, world modeling, planning, and execution, the new approach builds intelligent control systems where many individual modules each directly generate some part of the behavior of the robot.…The work draws its inspirations from neurobiology, ethology, psychophysics, and sociology” (p. 60). In the second part, “Philosophy,” the author appears to take his ethos from evolution. As in the first part, the last chapter, published in 1991, outlines the author's conceptual views as they evolved over the previous decade. Computers and thought are the two categories that together define artificial intelligence, and AI in turn has had a strong influence on aspects of computer architecture. Conversely, the author notes, “the state of computer architecture has been a strong influence on our models of thought” (p. 133). Work in behavior-based AI takes its cue from intelligence in biological systems, unlike the AI developed from models of von Neumann computations. The new models of intelligence are much closer in spirit to biological systems. The book, although naturally biased in part, especially in the “Philosophy” section, toward the author's views, is an informative and readable source for both specialists and general readers interested in modern robotics.