Someday soon there will be things (besides people and pets) that move about in, and manipulate, our environment, without our supervision or control. Such devices exist in laboratories and some are already in service in medical, military, and research applications. Research on these intelligent autonomous systems is progressing at a rapid rate, as evidenced by this book, a collection of revised and expanded papers selected from the 12th International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems held in 2012. These papers give us a good idea of just how close we are to seeing robots, robotic vehicles, and robotic devices everywhere.

The papers are grouped into three chapters. The first deals with the major problem of how a robot can determine its location and orientation relative to the environment. In several papers, position and orientation are determined using color video cameras that also provide distance information for each location in their images. In one paper, the video camera is mounted on a robotic wheelchair. Other papers talk about mobile robots in indoor environments, like those sometimes seen moving about among participants at conferences. Several papers focus on unmanned cars that can drive on or off roads, at speeds up to 60 kilometers per hour. Two papers describe a website for robots where they can help each other by sharing what they have learned. One paper reports on recent experiments focused on training a humanoid robot to move around a room and gather objects.

Chapter 2 explores various mechanical movement problems that arise with autonomous vehicles. Two papers deal with multi-rotor helicopters, focusing on controlling them with remote software (the helicopters are too small to have powerful onboard computers) and using them to collect multiple views of trees with onboard cameras. Two papers explore the stability problems of robots that fly by flapping wings. Two papers deal with object detection and navigation around objects by autonomous automobiles. Four papers deal with the design of robotic fish, the design of their tail fins, the swimming motions of their tails, and the deployment of various sensors on their bodies to facilitate their ability to determine their position and the water quality in their environment. One paper reports on a simulation study on the control of the camera gaze of a humanoid robot as it navigates through a dynamic environment. One paper compares two sensors that can be used to focus camera lenses.

The final chapter deals with service robots. Most of the papers are about robots that perform surgery of various types or assist in surgery. Topics include ways of training robots to perform surgery skillfully and safely, providing various sensory feedbacks, and designing for safety and collision avoidance. Two papers deal with training service robots to interact better with humans and to better communicate intentions between the robots and humans to improve cooperation.

Overall, this interesting collection of papers shows that robots and autonomous vehicles are almost ready to interact with us safely and efficiently. The papers are aimed at researchers and others intensely interested in intelligent autonomous systems.