The Fifth International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS 2000) was held in October 2000 in Knoxville, Tennessee, and was hosted by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Engineering Research Program of the Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy. This volume of proceedings presents a broad coverage of the state-of-the-art technical issues in distributed multirobot systems. Technologies, algorithms, and system architectures for distributed autonomous robotic systems are discussed. Specific topics include group behaviors, coordinated control, distributed planning, cellular robotics, self-organizing robotic systems, collective/swarm intelligence, and shared autonomy. The selected papers in this volume, contributed by leading researchers from Asia, Europe, and the Americas, provide a unique cutting-edge perspective on distributed multirobot systems.