In this book the author discusses synergies between computers and thought, related to the field of Artificial Intelligence; between people and thought, leading to questions of consciousness and our existence as humans; and between computers and people, leading to the recent remarkable advances in the field of humanoid robots. He then looks toward the implications of intelligent 'conscious' humanoid robots with superior intellects, able to operate in our human environments. After presenting the basic engineering components and supporting logic of computer systems, and giving an overview of the contributions of pioneering scientists in the domains of computing, logic, and robotics, in the core of the book the author examines the meaning of thought and intelligence in the context of specific tasks and successful AI approaches. In the final part of the book he introduces related societal and ethical implications. The book will be a useful accompanying text in courses on artificial intelligence, robotics, intelligent systems, games, and evolutionary computing. It will also be valuable for general readers and historians of technology.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th Irish International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, AICS 2002, held in Limerick, Ireland in September 2002.The 16 revised full papers and 17 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. Among the topics addressed are cognitive modeling, case-based reasoning, constraint processing, data mining, evolutionary computation, intelligent agents, information retrieval, knowledge representation, reasoning, machine learning, natural language processing, neural networks, perception, AI planning, robotics, and scheduling.

In this book the author discusses synergies between computers and thought, related to the field of Artificial Intelligence; between people and thought, leading to questions of consciousness and our existence as humans; and between computers and people, leading to the recent remarkable advances in the field of humanoid robots. He then looks toward the implications of intelligent 'conscious' humanoid robots with superior intellects, able to operate in our human environments. After presenting the basic engineering components and supporting logic of computer systems, and giving an overview of the contributions of pioneering scientists in the domains of computing, logic, and robotics, in the core of the book the author examines the meaning of thought and intelligence in the context of specific tasks and successful AI approaches. In the final part of the book he introduces related societal and ethical implications. The book will be a useful accompanying text in courses on artificial intelligence, robotics, intelligent systems, games, and evolutionary computing. It will also be valuable for general readers and historians of technology.

This book examines how two distinct strands of research on autonomous robots, evolutionary robotics and humanoid robot research, are converging. The book will be valuable for researchers and postgraduate students working in the areas of evolutionary robotics and bio-inspired computing.