The fifty-three contributions collected in this book present leading current research in one of the fastest moving fields of artificial intelligence. Organized around a view of robotics as "the intelligent connection of perception to action," they convey the excitement of cross-disciplinary discussion by scholars from the United States, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, West Germany, and Australia. Chapters in the book"s first part explore the connection between perception and action in three sections that deal with task level programming, integrated systems, and walking machines. The second part reports recent progress on the perceptual basis of robotics, with chapters grouped in sections on visual inspection, three-dimensional vision, and (nonvisual) local sensing. The third part focuses on systems that facilitate action, with sections that discuss mechanisms, kinematics and dynamics, and feedback control. A final part considers the application of robot systems to manufacturing, with chapters divided into two sections: on systems for manufacture and on robots and manufacture. The editors have written introductions to each of the book"s four major parts and eleven sections. This book is the twelfth in The MIT Press Series in Artificial intelligence, edited by Patrick Henry Winston and Michael Brady.