ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Explanation-Based Neural Neural Learning: A Lifelong Learning Approach is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation. The dissertation was accepted at the Computer Science Department of Bonn University, Germany, in 1995. I gratefully acknowledge the scientific advice of Tom Mitchell and Armin B. Cremers. I would also like to thank Avrim Blum, Hans Berliner, Joachim Buhmann, Richard Caruana, Lonnie Chrisman, Tom Dietterich, Ryusuke Masuoka, Andrew Moore, Joseph O'Sullivan, Anton Schwartz, Jude Shavlik, and the mobile robot groups at CMU and Bonn University for extremely fruitful and enlightening discussions, particularly in the early stage of this research. Finally, I wish to thank my wife Petra Dierkes-Thrun for proofreading earlier versions of this manuscript.