R E V B O O K I E W S

B A S I C A r t i f i c i a l I n t e l l i g e n c e M. James Butterworths, 1986, Softcover, £9.50 ISBN: 0 408 018208

This is one of a series of books concerned with the use of the BASIC language; but as far as I can determine it is one of the first to tackle a programming technology rather than an application of computers. As one might expect, therefore, it immediately raises issues of the validity of the language for artificial intelligence problems. The author anticipates this by pointing to the more general value of the techniques being presented, and to the advantages of BASIC. The out- come of his argument would seem to be that you can do anything you want in any language, so why not BASIC. Unfortunately, this does not overcome the concerns that relatively simple ideas may be confounded by over-intricate manipulations in a language representation essentially un- suited to the task in hand."

It is with these concerns in mind that I read the book. To a great extent my concern was justified. In the exam- ple programs, considerable effort is put into routines which structure and manipulate da ta and routines which process input; issues of recursion and da ta types are neatly avoided, through a l imitat ion in the scope of the examples; and pro- cedural versus declarative problem statements are not pur- sued.

What the book does contain, however, is an excellent presentation of a range of key topics in axtificial intelligence. These cover logic and reasoning, search strategies, natural language, memory and understanding, and learning in a simple but comprehensive way with a useful introduction to terminology as each new idea is introduced. As such the book is a good introductory reader, even when all the references to BASIC ate removed]

For those who really wish to translate these ideas into BASIC programs there are full examples corresponding to each Chapter topic. Although these programs are docu- mented to some extent, there is l i t t le help in explaining how to approach new problems in BASIC. It is therefore left to the reader to carefully analyse the programs and learn what he can from their approach if any new or ex- tended problems ate to be.tackled.

In summary, this is a useful introductory text on arti- ficial intelligence, and may be of some value to any who wish to have ~clever looking" programs on their BASIC computers; but it doesn ' t really tackle the underlying is- sues implied in the title.

K.J. MacCallum CAD Centre, StmthclMde University Glasgow

T h e o r y a n d P r a c t i c e o f R o b o t i c s a n d M a n i p u l a t o r s : Proceedings of RoManSy'84: The Fifth CISM-IFToMM Symposium A. Morecki, G. Bianchi and K. Kedzior, Eds. The MIT Press, 1985

This book is the proceedings of "RoManSy'84": The Fifth CISM-IFToMM Symposium, which was an interdisciplinary conference held at Udine, Italy, June 26-29, 1984. This was the fifth in a series of symposia which ate organl,ued to en- courage interaction between experts in the technology of Robots and Manipulators. The number of attendees at these conferences is l imited in order to ensure that a close interchange of ideas ensues.

The conferences ate generally held every other year (al- ternating between I taly and Poland), sponsored joint ly by the International Centre for Mechanical Sciences (CISM), and the International Federation for the Theory of Ma- chines and Mechanisms (IFToMM). Papers were solicited at highly theoretical levels in the following areas, which make up separate parts of the book:

• Mechanics

s Control of Motion

• Man-lntelllgent Machine Systems

• Synthesis and Design

• Biomechanics of Motion: Locomotion

• Application and Performance Evaluation

There ate 45 papers in this proceedings, so a complete review of each of them will not be possible (nor would it be very readable). Of course, some of the papers which I personally found interesting have been outlined in more detail , but in general this review will a t tempt to point out interesting themes in the conference by relating examples from the individual papers.

O p e n i n g L e c t u r e : Biomechanical Aspects in Robotics - A. Morecki and K. Kedzior

The opening lecture emphasizes the importance of studying the biomechanics of biological systems in the analysis and design of robots. According to their calculations, approxi- mately 35 percent of the papers in preview RoManSy Sym- posia have dealt with some aspect of biomechanics. The authors go on to call for interdisciplinaty research between engineers, biologists, and physicians; at both experimen- tal and theorectical levels. While the importance of this is generally recotmised today, their suggestion provides a common thread which ties together the numerous papers of the proceedings, and provides an enthusiastic direction for the conference opening.

The authors point out the different methods used by re- searchers in separate disciplines to a t tack problem• in this common but very broad field of Robotics. However, they fail to divide the biomechanicai group any finer than two sub-groups: the "mechanical engineering approach," and the "electronics and computer science ~ orientation. In the