The Fifth International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS 2000) dealt with new strategies to realize complex, modular, robust, and fault-tolerant robotic systems. Technologies, algorithms, and system architectures for distributed autonomous robotic systems were presented and discussed during the meeting. DARS 2000 was truly an international event, with participants represent­ ing eleven countries from Europe, Asia, and the Americas. All of the papers in this volume were presented at DARS 2000, and were selected on the basis of peer re­ views to ensure quality and relevance. These papers have the common goal of con­ tributing solutions to realize robust and intelligent multirobot systems. The topics of the symposium address a wide range of issues that are important in the development of decentralized robotic systems. These topics include architec­ tures, communication, biological inspirations, reconfigurable robots, localization, exploration and mapping, distributed sensing, multi robot motion coordination, tar­ get assignment and tracking, multirobot learning, and cooperative object transport. DARS clearly requires a broad area of interdisciplinary technologies related not only to robotics and computer engineering, but also to biology and psychology. The DARS symposium is the leading established conference on distributed au­ tonomous systems. The First, Second, and Third International Symposia on Distrib­ uted Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS '92, DARS '94, and DARS '96) were held at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), Saitama, Japan.