Welcome to the Special Issue of the Journal of Robotics and Autonomous Systems on 'Discrete Tarek M. Sobh reccivcd the B.Sc. ill Engineering degrcc with honors in Computer Science and Automatic Control from the Faculty of Lngineer ing, Alexandria University. Egypt in 1988, and M.S. and Ph. D. degrees in Computer and Information Sciencc from the School of k.ngincering, University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and 1991, respectively. Hc is currently a Research Assistant Professor of Corn purer Science at the Department of Computer Science, University ol Utah, and the Co-Chairman of the Discrete Event Dynamic Systems (DEDS) Technical Committee of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. Dr. Sobh was a research Fellow al the General Robotics and Active Sensor' Perception (GRASP) Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania during 1989 1991. His background is in the fields of computer science and engineering, control theory, robotics, computer vi sion and signal processing, Iris current research interests include reverse engineering and industrial inspection, CAD/CAM and active perception under uncertainty, robots and electromechanical systems prototyping, and automation fl)r genetics applications. He has published over 50 iournal and conference papers, book chapters, and technical reportx