The design of autonomous robots is one of the most exciting and challenging goals of Artificial Intelligence. Robotic agents constitute a link between knowledge representation and symbolic reasoning on the one hand, and robotics on the other hand. This book provides an in-depth and uniform treatment of a mathematical model for robotic agents. It also contains a programming method and system based on this model.

The mathematical model, known as the Fluent Calculus, describes how to use classical first-order logic for setting up symbolic models of dynamic worlds and for representing knowledge of actions and their effects. Robotic agents use this knowledge and their reasoning facilities to make decisions when they follow high-level, long-term strategies. Issues covered in this book include reasoning about sensor input, acting under incomplete knowledge and uncertainty, planning, intelligent troubleshooting, and many other topics.

The mathematical model is supplemented by a programming method called FLUX, which allows readers to design their own reasoning robotic agents. The usage of this method is illustrated by many example programs. The books includes a detailed description of an implementation of FLUX in the standard programming language Prolog.