Brain, Body and Machine

The Centre for Intelligent Machines (CIM), McGill University, was of?cially c- ated on November13th, 1985,upon approvalby the University Senate. The mission of the centre is, since its inception, "to excel in the ?eld of intelligent systems, stressing basic research, technology development and education." Intelligent - chines are understood,along these lines, as systems "capable of adapting their go- oriented behavior by sensing and interpreting their environment, making decisions and plans, and then carrying out those plans using physical actions." Research - tivities of interest to CIM include robot design, mechanical system dynamics, robot control,computervision,visualperception,medicalimaging,haptics,systemtheory and applications, and virtual environments.These ?elds can be succinctly described by the title of the international symposium recorded in this book,Brain,Bodyand Machine (BBM). CIM's objectof research is thusre?ected in the book,wherereaderswill ?nd that most papers cover at least two of the three main thrusts. Papers re?ect the state-- the-artofthemultidisciplineofintelligentmachines,nowadayshighlydiversi?ed.A broad spectrum of applications is covered, from humanoid robots and autonomous planetary rovers, to innovative procedures and systems for shape-reproduction and on to systems or devices for medical diagnosis. Applications are all geared to one commongoal,a better quality of life for highlychallengedpatients or simply for the healthy individual. Methods to face the challenges include not only sophisticated deterministic algorithms, but also their heuristic counterparts, at the roots of what is known assoftcomputing.