This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, SAB 2014, held in Castellon, Spain, in July 2014. The 32 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the proceedings. They cover the main areas in animat research, including the animat approach and methodology, perception and motor control, navigation and internal world models, learning and adaptation, evolution and collective and social behavior.

This work proposes a complete sensor-independent visual system that provides robust target motion detection. First, the way sensors obtain images, in terms of resolution distribution and pixel neighbourhood, is studied. This allows a spatial analysis of motion to be carried out. Then, a novel background maintenance approach for robust target motion detection is implemented. Two different situations are considered: a fixed camera observing a constant background where objects are moving; and a still camera observing objects in movement within a dynamic background. This distinction lies on developing a surveillance mechanism without the constraint of observing a scene free of foreground elements for several seconds when a reliable initial background model is obtained, as that situation cannot be guaranteed when a robotic system works in an unknown environment. Other problems are also addressed to successfully deal with changes in illumination, and the distinction between foreground and background elements.