Overview

Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS) are the physical embodiment of machine intelligence providing a core concept for integrating various advanced techno- gies with pattern recognition and learning. The basic philosophy of IAS research is to explore and understand the nature of intelligence in problems of perception, reasoning, learning and control in order to develop and implement the theory to engineered realization. In other words, the objective is to formulate various me- odologies for the development of robots which can operate autonomously and exhibit intelligent behavior by making appropriate decisions to perform the right task at the right time. Since IAS basically deals with the integration of machines, computing, sensing, and software to create intelligent systems capable of intera- ing with the complexities of the real world, advanced topics like soft computing, artificial life, evolutionary biology, and cognitive psychology have great promise in improving its intelligence and performance. Because of the inter-disciplinary character, the subject has several challenging issues for research, design and development covering a number of disciplines. These issues are further concerned with the development of both technology and methodology apart from various operations. The present research monograph titled "Intelligent Autonomous Systems: Foundations and Applications", edited by two renowned researchers, Professor Dilip K. Pratihar of IIT, Kharagpur, India and Professor Lakhmi C. Jain, Univ- sity of South Australia, Australia, provides a fairly representative cross-section of the activities that is going on all over the world in this area.