Autonomous robots are robots which can perform desired tasks in unstructured environments without continuous human guidance. Many kinds of robots have some degree of autonomy. Different robots can be autonomous in different ways. A high degree of autonomy is particularly desirable in fields such as space exploration, cleaning floors, mowing lawns, and waste water treatment.

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is an unpiloted aircraft. UAVs come in two varieties: some are controlled from a remote location, and others fly autonomously based on pre-programmed flight plans using more complex dynamic automation systems. Currently, UAVs perform reconnaissance as well as attack missions. They are also used in a small but growing number of civil applications, such as firefighting. UAVs are often preferred for missions that are too "dull, dirty, or dangerous" for manned aircraft.

In artificial intelligence, genetic programming (GP) is an evolutionary algorithm-based methodology inspired by biological evolution to find computer programs that perform a user-defined task. It is a specialization of genetic algorithms where each individual is a computer program. Therefore it is a machine learning technique used to optimize a population of computer programs according to a fitness landscape determined by a program's ability to perform a given computational task.

A Mobile Robot is an automatic machine that is capable of movement in a given environment.

Evolutionary Robotics (ER) is a methodology that uses evolutionary computation to develop controllers for autonomous robots.

In computer science evolutionary computation is a subfield of artificial intelligence (more particularly computational intelligence) that involves combinatorial optimization problems.

Evolutionary computation uses iterative progress, such as growth or development in a population. This population is then selected in a guided random search using parallel processing to achieve the desired end. Such processes are often inspired by biological mechanisms of evolution.

Multi-objective optimization (or programming), also known as multi-criteria or multi-attribute optimization, is the process of simultaneously optimizing two or more conflicting objectives subject to certain constraints.