Currently, performing complex tasks in unstructured and dynamic environments is still a significant challenge to traditional software agents and autonomous robots. Advances in intelligent agents and robotics over the last decade have been extraordinary, promising unprecedented potential for future scientific breakthroughs and applications. At the present time, however, a number of research bottlenecks to future advancement have been identified such as the creation of cognitive agents that can make their own representations, that are aware of what they are doing, that can adapt robustly to changing conditions and requirements, and that can deal with novel and unexpected situations. This volume contains selected papers addressing these challenging issues. The papers were originally presented at the International Symposium on Practical Cognitive Agents and Robots (PCAR2006). They were subsequently enriched and extended after the symposium and have undergone several rounds of rigorous peer reviewing. The PCAR symposium is unique and innovative in its focus, taking a contemporary integrative transdisciplinary practical view of cognitive agents and robots. This volume contains high quality research that describes practical ideas and scientific results from human–robot interaction to high-level reasoning that address the following important specific research issues: