From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: new books from MIT Press Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 15:29:17 GMT NEW BOOKS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE FROM THE MIT PRESS Featured in this e-mail: Introduction to AI Robotics, by Robin R. Murphy Evolutionary Robotics, by Stefano Nolfi and Dario Floreano *If you would like to receive a free hard copy of our Computer Science catalog, please send an email including your name and mailing address to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with "Computer Science catalog" in the subject line. Please follow the URLs below for more information. Introduction to AI Robotics Robin R. Murphy http://mitpress.mit.edu/promotions/books/MURIHF00 This text covers all the material needed to understand the principles behind the AI approach to robotics and to program an artificially intelligent robot for applications involving sensing, navigation, planning, and uncertainty. Robin Murphy is extremely effective at combining theoretical and practical rigor with a light narrative touch. In the overview, for example, she touches upon anthropomorphic robots from classic films and science fiction stories before delving into the nuts and bolts of organizing intelligence in robots. Following the overview, Murphy contrasts AI and engineering approaches and discusses what she calls the three paradigms of AI robotics: hierarchical, reactive, and hybrid deliberative/reactive. Later chapters explore multiagent scenarios, navigation and path-planning for mobile robots, and the basics of computer vision and range sensing. Each chapter includes objectives, review questions, and exercises. Many chapters contain one or more case studies showing how the concepts were implemented on real robots. Murphy, who is well known for her classroom teaching, conveys the intellectual adventure of mastering complex theoretical and technical material. Robin R. Murphy is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and in the Department of Psychology, at the University of South Florida, Tampa. 8 x 9, 400 pp., 100 illus., cloth ISBN 0-262-13383-0 Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents series A Bradford Book Evolutionary Robotics The Biology, Intelligence, and Technology of Self-Organizing Machines Stefano Nolfi and Dario Floreano http://mitpress.mit.edu/promotions/books/NOLEHF00 Evolutionary robotics is a new technique for the automatic creation of autonomous robots. Inspired by the Darwinian principle of selective reproduction of the fittest, it views robots as autonomous artificial organisms that develop their own skills in close interaction with the environment and without human intervention. Drawing heavily on biology and ethology, it uses the tools of neural networks, genetic algorithms, dynamic systems, and biomorphic engineering. The resulting robots share with simple biological systems the characteristics of robustness, simplicity, small size, flexibility, and modularity. In evolutionary robotics, an initial population of artificial chromosomes, each encoding the control system of a robot, is randomly created and put into the environment. Each robot is then free to act (move, look around, manipulate) according to its genetically specified controller while its performance on various tasks is automatically evaluated. The fittest robots then "reproduce" by swapping parts of their genetic material with small random mutations. The process is repeated until the "birth" of a robot that satisfies the performance criteria. This book describes the basic concepts and methodologies of evolutionary robotics and the results achieved so far. An important feature is the clear presentation of a set of empirical experiments of increasing complexity. Software with a graphic interface, freely available on a Web page, will allow the reader to replicate and vary (in simulation and on real robots) most of the experiments. Stefano Nolfi is Coordinator of the Division of Neural Systems and Artificial Life, Institute of Psychology, National Research Council, Rome. Dario Floreano is Assistant Professor of Biorobotics and Adaptive Systems, Institute of Robotics, Department of Microengineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne. 7 x 9, 384 pp., 157 illus., cloth ISBN 0-262-14070-5 Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents series A Bradford Book "An excellent book providing a thorough coverage of the subject. Clearly and insightfully written, this is a must for researchers and postgraduate students interested in new approaches to intelligent robotics." --Phil Husbands, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex "This is an exciting new area that has implications and ramifications ranging from psychology to artificial life; can we create robots with intelligent or adaptive behavior using techniques comparable to the Darwinian evolution that created the animals and ourselves? Here is an authoritative, clearly written survey written by two of the researchers who helped to pioneer the field." --Inman Harvey, Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics and Centre for the Study of Evolution, University of Sussex == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
