born December 30, 1954, Adelaide, South Australia

By the time Brooks had finished his doctorate and moved to the Mobile Robotics Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984, he had become discouraged with AI research, especially with the field's top-down approach to problem solving. The top-down approach, which dominated the field at that time, presupposes that a computer must first be supplied with an internal representation of the “essential” features of the world in which it operates—an immensely difficult framework problem for all but the very simplest tasks. Brooks turned this approach on its head, arguing that research should focus on a bottom-up approach—that is, on action and behaviour rather than on representation and function. Brooks began by building basic robots that could perform the simplest “insect-like” actions. (See the photograph-->.) Although no one claims that insects have sophisticated brains, they can engage in rather elaborate behaviours. Similarly, building on a few simple actions and the premise that learning comes from interacting with the real world rather than any model, Brooks's robots displayed surprisingly complex behaviour.