The objective of this interdisciplinary conference is to bring together researchers in computer science, artificial intelligence, alife, control, robotics, neurosciences, ethology, evolutionary biology, and related fields so as to further our understanding of the behaviors and underlying mechanisms that allow natural and artificial animals to adapt and survive in uncertain environments. The conference will focus on experiments with well-defined models---robot models, computer simulation models, mathematical models---designed to help characterize and compare various organizational principles or architectures underlying adaptive behavior in real animals and in synthetic agents, the animats.