born Dec. 30, 1954, Adelaide, S.Aus., Austl.
Australian computer scientist.
By the time he finished his doctorate (1981) at Stanford University, Calif., Brooks was disillusioned by the traditional "model-based" approach to artificial intelligence (AI). After moving to the Mobile Robotics Laboratory at MIT in 1984, he built simple robots that could perform "insectlike" actions on the premise that practical learning comes from interacting with the real world. In 1997 Brooks became director of the MIT AI Research Laboratory.