ABSTRACT
The new approaches that have been developed recently for artificial intelligence (AI) arose from work with mobile robots. This chapter outlines the context within which this work arose and discusses some key realizations made by the researchers involved. It traces the development of the foundational ideas for AI, and how they were intimately linked to the technology available for computation. The chapter provides a brief overview of developments in the understanding of biological intelligence. It covers material from ethology, psychology, and neuroscience. The chapter also introduces the two cornerstones to the new approach to AI, situatedness and embodiment, and discusses both intelligence and emergence in these contexts. It outlines some details of the approach of group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to building complete situated, embodied, artificially intelligent robots. This approach shares more heritage with biological systems than with what is usually called AI.
