Page 11 - Concise Encyclopedia of Robotics

Foreword

W elcome to the high frontier of cognition and computation!
You are about to dig into a uniquely interesting and important book.
This is not a highly technical or abstruse guide to this often complex and
difficult-to-understand subject.Rather,the book provides short,clear def-
initions and interpretations of the major concepts and rapidly emerging
ideas in this dynamic field. The work includes numerous functional illus-
trations that help the general reader “see” the abstract robotics notions
presented. I envision this book as an important introductory overview for
the general interested reader and artificial intelligence (AI) hobbyist, and
as a valuable backup and refresher for professional workers in the area.
Because this book is all about terms, let me frame the effort by saying that
it addresses two major, universal needs: cognition and computation.
Cognition (kog-NISH-un) is literally “the act of knowing or aware-
ness.” As you refer to definitions in this book, you should steadily gain
knowledge and awareness of the robotics/AI topics presented. Most
interestingly, it is your own central nervous system (brain and spinal
cord), functionally connected to your eyes, that is allowing your natural
intelligence (NI) to study this material and build a relevant cognition
(mental awareness) of key robotics concepts. A thorough cognition and
comprehension of robotics/AI terminology and concepts is becoming
absolutely critical to all intelligent lay people worldwide.

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