Paperback. The Symposium on Artificial Intelligence in Real-Time Control 97 (AIRTC '97) was the seventh in the series of symposia and workshops under the sponsorship of the International Federation of Automatic Control's (IFAC) Co-ordinating Committee in Computer Control and of the Technical Committee on Artificial Intelligence in Real-Time Control.Artificial Intelligence methods, including expert systems, artificial neural networks, fuzzy systems and genetic algorithms, are penetrating almost every field of engineering. These methods have shown their possible application in control, monitoring and supervising tasks which are difficult or impossible to solve when using conventional techniques. We have now come to a stage where there is a need to discuss and present these methods in a broader framework, not only showing their concepts and available algorithms, but also their relative benefits, advantages and disadvantages. This was the purpose of th

This symposium was the seventh in a very successful series in this field. Since the beginning of the series, there have been a number of very positive developments in the topical area of 'Intelligent Control'. In particular, the area referred to as 'situated control' has stimulated the formation of new perspectives towards real-time intelligent systems. The performances of such artificial species as walking cockroaches, maze-negotiating mice, coke-can collecting robots and the like have encouraged the exploration of yet more adaptive control perspectives. In this symposium, there was a strong wind of change bringing more consideration of the roles of learning, evolution, hybrid systems and so on under many diverse labels and for many different systems and circumstances.