Phil Husbands is Research Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Sussex. He has been a leading researcher in AI, Robotics and Artificial Life for more than 30 years. He is one of the originators of the field of evolutionary robotics, was founding co-director of the Sussex Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics and has worked extensively with industry. His research is wide ranging but centres on adaptive systems in robotics, AI and neuroscience. He is also a historian of AI and cybernetics.

• Preface


• 1: Robots are Here


• 2: The Basics


• 3: Some History


• 4: Inside the Machine


• 5: Robot Fantasies: Robots in Popular Culture


• 6: Intelligence, Super-Intelligence and Cyborgs


• 7: Robots at Work


• 8: Robot Ethics


• 9: Robot Futures

Phil Husbands introduces the field of robotics, where it has come from, and where it might go in the future. Explaining the technology underlying robots and their capabilities today, he also considers both the ethical problems of robots with increasing intelligence, and the wider socio-political challenges they create.