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.