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 architectures, 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.