ing RBL to complex domains.
The appeal for RBL is that it is Neural Networks for Pattern Recognitionby
an unsupervised learning technique, very little domain knowl-
edge is required, and it is mathematically sound. Nehmzow and
colleagues show learning behaviors using associative memories
and rules to be maintained by the robot they call instinct rules. It
is impressive how their Lego robots learn behaviors to avoid
obstacles, follow walls, and follow corridors. Having worked
with Lego vehicles, one is impressed that such robots with lim-
ited structure and computation learn their tasks before self-
destructing. (Experiments with physical robots are superior to
simulations, and we are quite impressed with work describing
learning using physical robots.) Colombetti and Dorigo use
classifier systems on a physical robot to learn complex behav-
iors as composition of simple behaviors.
In the section on Evolution, Harvey, Husbands, and Cliff state
in their paper, "An Animal should not be considered as a solu-
tion to a problem posed 4 billion years ago." This position advo-
cates devising evolution mechanisms that use the agent's own
physiology to adapt to their world and exhibit intelligent behav-
ior with respect to their own physiology. Papers in Evolution
have in common the themes encountered in the artificial life
community.
Papers in the Collective Behavior section describe experiments
with many interacting robots engaged in group activity. These
papers explore architecture and/or behaviors of each agent that
contribute to collective behaviors. Sometimes, interesting
behaviors from local interactions that are not programmed into
agents are observed, called emergent behaviors.
In the One Page Summaries at the end of proceedings we see a
diverse array of papers presented as posters that belong in artifi-
cial life. These papers make a nice transition to artificial life
research and contribute to study of adaptive behavior. Artificial
Life has attracted scientists from varying disciplines. Animat
research shares with artificial life research the goal of creating
creatures that appear lifelike. These creatures "live" and may
learn, reproduce, and die. Many of these creatures are given
habitats and studied for their behavior and evolution. It is yet
too early in artificial life research to identify common tech-
niques for creature building or study of them. However, a gen-
eral approach in this research is to produce physical systems
that interact in realistic situations. This is supported by a trend
toward building inexpensive and simple robots with very simple
behavior engines and embeding them in a physical environment.
Under such an approach, it is possible for external observers to
note behaviors (resulting from interactions of the robot with the
environment) that are unexpected, apparently intelligent, and
can be viewed as behaviors that emerge from the simple compu-
tational elements with which the robot is endowed. It will be
interesting to follow these lines of research (animats and artifi-
cial life) to see development of adaptive and emergent behav-
iors in intelligent agents.
References:
{agree90}Philip Agre and David Chapman. What are plans
for? In Pattie Maes, editor, Designing Autonomous Agents,
chapter 2, pages 17--34. MIT Press, 1990.
{brooks90} Rodney A. Brooks. Elephants dont play chess. In
Pattie Maes, editor Designing Autonomous Agents, pages 3--15.
MIT Press, 1990.
Albert Nigrin
MIT Press, 1993 Hard cover, xix + 413 pages, $45.00
Reviewed by: Michael de la Maza
Numinous Noetics Group
M1T AI Lab
Cambridge, M A 02139
mdlm@ai.mit.edu
Newly minted assistant professors often super-charge their
careers and their curriculum vitae by publishing elaborations of
their dissertations in the form of books. Indeed, the practice is
so common and so effective that it is recommended in "Getting
what you came for: The smart student's guide to earning a Mas-
ter's or a Ph.D." by Robert L. Peters. Albert Nigrin's "Neural
Networks for Pattern Recognition" is such a book. The disserta-
tion from which the book springs was written under the direc-
tion of Alan Biermann at Duke University.
The book begins with a typical and benighted attack on sym-
bolic AI. Typical because everyone from neural network
researchers to genetic programming hackers to mobile robot
enthusiasts has discussed the shortcomings of symbolic AI -
often demonstrating greater flaws in their own thinking than in
symbolic AI. Benighted because Nigrin regurgitates often
repeated and scantily supported statements. To wit: "...there is a
certain flavor to the components of neural networks that is not
found in the components of ordinary circuits" (p. 15). What is
this ineffable, ephemeral, indescribable "flavor"? Nigrin would
better further his cause if he avoided this mysticism - a mysti-
cism that, in the eyes of symbolic AI researchers, besmirches
and taints the connectionist field. Nigrin finishes this discussion
as he must - by confessing that his neural networks are imple-
mented on serial computers, hence they cannot enjoy the mysti-
cal, supernatural advantages that he attributes to parallel,
distributed computation.
If the rest of the book continued in the same sclerotic vein then
one could conclude, with justification, that the book is not worth
reading. Fortunately, it does not. Nigrin is interested in develop-
ing networks that self-organize using supervised learning, form
stable category codes, operate under the presence of noise, oper-
ate in real-time, perform fast and slow learning, scale well to
large problems, use feedback expectancies to bias classifica-
tions, create arbitrarily coarse or tight classifications that are
distortion insensitive, perform context-sensitive recognition,
process multiple patterns simultaneously, combine existing rep-
resentations to create categories for novel patterns, perform syn-
onym processing, and unlearn or modify categories when
necessary. All of these criteria are described in complete, if
somewhat breathless, detail. Nigrin tests his neural network
architectures on a variety of problems that come from the natu-
ral language processing field.
Nigrin notes that some of these thirteen requirements are satis-
fied, at least in part, by neural networks developed in Gross-
berg's research group and that his own research is to a large
degree motivated by the desire to extend and improve Gross-
berg's work. Nigrin acknowledges this debt and provides a
11 S I G A R T Bulletin, Vol. 5 No. 2
foundation for his research by summarizing some of Gross- the capabilities of their networks could do worse than read his
berg's work in Chapter 2. This chapter, which will have propae- book.
deutic value for those new to the field, but which should be
skipped by experts, presents the parts of adaptive resonance the- {SGrossberg88} S. Grossberg. Neural Networks and Natural
ory [SGrossberg88] which are critical for understanding SON- Intelligence MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1988.
NET, the neural network architecture that Nigrin develops in
this book. {BMoore88} B.Moore. Art 1 and pattern clustering. Proceed-
ings of the 1988 Connectionist Summer School: Connectionist
These beginning chapters force tile novice reader to absorb an Models, pages 174--185, 1988.
enormous amount of not always precisely defined vocabulary:
outstar, modifiable LTM weight, passive decay, total field activ-
ity, feedforward on-center off-surround network, shunting equa-
tion, masking field, and on and on. The reader who is interested
in a gentler, jargon-free introduction to adaptive resonance the-
ory should consult Moore's introductory article [BMoore88].
But the reader who does slog through this sesquipedalian
swamp is rewarded with chapter 3, the meat of the book.
The third chapter introduces SONNET 1 (Self-Organizing Neu-
ral NETwork) which is designed to meet many of the thirteen
previously mentioned criteria. One novel feature of this chapter
and the ones that follow it is that Nigrin has taken pains to
describe the anfractuous and arduous road that he took to reach
the final SONNET algorithm. He writes: "As in the previous
example, I know that this problem exists not because I was
smart enough to avoid it in advance but because I wasted time
trying to get it to work! And if I a:m going to suffer through try-
ing a method, I feel that the reader should have to suffer through
learning about it!" (p. 158). But suffer is the wrong word. By
reporting both positive and negative results Nigrin shows the
reader what to do and what to avoid.

Nigrin engineers a variety of mechanisms for meeting his thir-

teen criteria. Some of them, such as normalizing outputs, are
straightforward techniques that have been used in other fields,
while others, such as his analysis of the attentional reset mecha-
nism, contain new insights that repay careful study. The exposi-
tion of these methods could have been improved by giving
pseudo-code, something which Nigrin does only once. By the
end of chapter 3, Nigrin has convinced the reader that SONNET
addresses many issues that other neural network architectures
do not. Chapter 4 extends these results to include temporal pat-
terns and chapter 5 shows how to add additional layers to SON-
NET. While reading these chapters, the reader should keep in
mind that although many of the equations that govern the
behavior of SONNET have time derivatives, most of the mathe-
matical analysis depends only on equilibrium properties, not
dynamical properties. However, some of the dynamical proper-
ties of the equations are used to dismiss certain potential solu-
tions.

Chapters 6 and 7 describe a series of extensions to SONNET

that are designed to overcome some of its shortcomings. The
primary insight of these two chapters is that if the signals on the
connections between nodes compete, instead of the nodes com-
peting, then certain problems are easier to solve. This novel idea
will have to await implementation before final judgment can be
passed on it.

One of the blurbs that appears on the overleaf notes that

Nigdn's book contains a wealth of ideas for those who are
familiar only with backpropagation neural network algorithms.
This is certainly true and those who are interested in increasing

SIGART Bulletin, Vol. 5 No. 2 12