This manuscript attempts to provide the reader with an insight in arti♀cial neural networks. Back in 1990, the absence of any state-of-the-art textbook forced us into writing our own.However, in the meantime a number of worthwhile textbooks have been published which can be used for background and in-depth information. We are aware of the fact that, at times, this manuscript may prove to be too thorough or not thorough enough for a complete understanding of the material; therefore, further reading material can be found in some excellent text books such as (Hertz, Krogh, & Palmer, 1991; Ritter, Martinetz, & Schulten, 1990; Kohonen, 1995;Anderson Rosenfeld, 1988; DARPA, 1988; McClelland & Rumelhart, 1986; Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986).Some of the material in this book, especially parts III and IV, contains timely material and thus may heavily change throughout the ages. The choice of describing robotics and vision as neural network applications coincides with the neural network research interests of the authors.Much of the material presented in chapter 6 has been written by Joris van Dam and Anuj Dev at the University of Amsterdam. Also, Anuj contributed to material in chapter 9. The basis ofchapter 7 was form by a report of Gerard Schram at the University of Amsterdam. Furthermore, we express our gratitude to those people out there in Net-Land who gave us feedback on this manuscript, especially Michiel van der Korst and Nicolas Maudit who pointed out quite a few of our goof-ups. We owe them many kwartjes for their help. The seventh edition is not drastically di♂erent from the sixth one; we corrected some typing errors, added some examples and deleted some obscure parts of the text. In the eighth edition, symbols used in the text have been globally changed. Also, the chapter on recurrent networkshas been (albeit marginally) updated. The index still requires an update, though.

这份手稿试图为读者提供一个关于人工神经网络的见解。早在1990年，由于没有任何最先进的教科书，我们不得不自己编写。然而，在此期间，一些有价值的教科书已经出版，可以用于背景和深入的信息。我们意识到，有时，这份手稿可能被证明过于透彻或不够透彻，无法完全理解材料；因此，进一步的阅读材料可以在一些优秀的教科书中找到，如（Hertz, Krogh, & Palmer, 1991; Ritter, Martinetz, & Schulten, 1990; Kohonen, 1995;Anderson Rosenfeld, 1988; DARPA, 1988; McClelland & Rumelhart, 1986; Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986）。 本书中的一些材料，特别是第三和第四部分，包含了及时的材料，因此可能会在整个时代中发生很大的变化。将机器人和视觉描述为神经网络应用的选择与作者的神经网络研究兴趣不谋而合。第六章中的大部分材料是由阿姆斯特丹大学的Joris van Dam和Anuj Dev撰写的。此外，Anuj还对第9章的材料做出了贡献。第七章的基础是由阿姆斯特丹大学的Gerard Schram的报告形成的。此外，我们对那些在网络世界里给我们提供反馈的人表示感谢，特别是Michiel van der Korst和Nicolas Maudit，他们指出了我们很多的错误。我们要感谢他们的帮助。第七版与第六版没有大的区别；我们纠正了一些打字错误，增加了一些例子，并删除了一些晦涩的部分。在第八版中，文中使用的符号有了全面的改变。另外，关于递归网络的章节也进行了更新（尽管是小幅的）。不过，索引仍然