Bionics evolved in the 1960s as a framework to pursue the development of artificial systems based on the study of biological systems. Numerous disciplines and technologies, including artificial intelligence and learningdevices, information processing, systems architecture and control, perception, sensory mechanisms, and bioenergetics, contributed to bionics research. This volume is based on a NATO Advanced Research Workshop within the Special Programme on Sensory Systems for Robotic Control, held in Il Ciocco, Italy, in June 1989. A consensus emerged at the workshop, and is reflected in the book, on the value of learning from nature in order to derive guidelines for the design of intelligent machines which operate in unstructured environments. The papers in the book are grouped into seven chapters: vision and dynamic systems, hands and tactile perception, locomotion, intelligent motor control, design technologies, interfacing robots to nervous systems, and robot societies and self-organization.

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1. Vision and Dynamic Systems.- Active Perception and Exploratory Robotics.- Object Identification and Search: Animate Vision Alternatives to Image Interpretation.- A Model of Human Feature Detection Based on Matched Filters.- Visualizing and Understanding Patterns of Brain Architecture.- Dynamic Vision.- A Model of the Acquisition of Object Representations in Human 3D Visual Recognition.- 2. Hands and Tactile Perception.- The Perception of Mechanical Stimuli Through the Skin of the Hand and Its Physiological Bases.- Borrowing Some Ideas from Biological Manipulators to Design an Artificial One.- Mechanical Design for Whole-Arm Manipulation.- Whole-Hand Manipulation: Design of an Articulated Hand Exploiting All Its Parts to Increase Dexterity.- Stable Grasping and Manipulation by a Multifinger Hand with the Capability of Compliance Control.- 3. Locomotion.- Mobile Robots the Lessons from Nature.- Quadruped Walking Machine Creation of the Model of Motion.- Biped Locomotion by FNS: Control Issues and an ANN Implementation.- How Fast Can a Legged Robot Run?.- Robot Biped Walking Stabilized with Trunk Motion.- 4. Intelligent Motor Control.- A New Concept of the Role of Proprioceptive and Recurrent Inhibitory Feedback in Motor Control.- Analogic Models for Robot Programming.- Structural Constraints and Computational Problems in Motor Control.- Motion Control in Intelligent Machines.- Control of Contact in Robots and Biological Systems.- Motor Control Simulation of Time Optimal Fast Movement in Man.- Constraints on Underspecified Target Trajectories.- Proposal for a Pattern Matching Task Controller for Sensor-Based Coordination of Robot Motions.- Sensory-Motor Mapping with a Sequential Network.- 5. Design Technologies.- Flexible Robot Manipulators and Grippers:Relatives of Elephant Trunks and Squid Tentacles.- Progress in the Design and Control of Pseudomuscular Linear Actuators.- Shape Memory Alloy Linear Actuators for Tendon-Based Biomorphic Actuating Systems.- CCD Retina and Neural Net Processor.- Retina-Like CCD Sensor for Active Vision.- Designing Artificial Structures from Biological Models.- Design Strategies for Gas and Odour Sensors Which Mimic the Olfactory System.- 6. Interfacing Robots to Nervous System.- Multi-Electrode Stimulation of Myelinated Nerve Fibers.- The Role of Materials in Designing Nerve Guidance Channels and Chronic Neural Interfaces.- Regeneration-Type Peripheral Nerve Interfaces for Direct Man/Machine Communication.- Integrated Bioelectronic Transducers.- 7. Robot Societies and Self-Organization.- A Robot Being.- Swarm Intelligence in Cellular Robotic Systems.- A Control Architecture for Cooperative Intelligent Robots.- Cellular Robotics Construction of Complicated Systems from Simple Functions.