Professor Rodney Brooks is an Australian who heads the prestigious MIT AI Laboratory. Professor Brooks is a pioneer of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. He is recognised as being one of the top robotics researchers in the world. Professor Brooks has made significant contributions to robotics, in particular he opened up an entirely new area of research, called behaviour based systems. Professor Brooks has spent the last 20 years working in the USA. He has maintained strong links with Australia, by supporting Flinders University alumni; recently he has also conducted cooperative research with Professor Alex Zelinsky of the Australian National University, and has assisted to provide PhD and post-doc opportunities to Australians at MIT.