This book contains the papers that were presented at the 17th International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR). The ISRR promotes the development and dissemination of groundbreaking research and technological innovation in robotics useful to society by providing a lively, intimate, forward-looking forum for discussion and debate about the current status and future trends of robotics with great emphasis on its potential role to benefit humankind. The symposium contributions contained in this book report on a variety of new robotics research results covering a broad spectrum organized into the categories: design, control; grasping and manipulation, planning, robot vision, and robot learning.

The inspiration from Biology and the Natural Evolution process has become a research area within computer science. For instance, the description of the arti?cial neuron given by McCulloch and Pitts was inspired from biological observations of neural mechanisms; the power of evolution in nature in the diverse species that make up our world has been related to a particular form of problem solving based on the idea of survival of the ?ttest; similarly, - ti?cial immune systems, ant colony optimisation, automated self-assembling programming, membrane computing, etc. also have their roots in natural phenomena. The ?rst and second editions of the International Workshop on Nature Inspired Cooperative Strategies for Optimization (NICSO), were held in Granada, Spain, 2006, and in Acireale, Italy, 2007, respectively. As in these two previous editions, the aim of NICSO 2008, held in Tenerife, Spain, was to provide a forum were the latest ideas and state of the art research related to nature inspired cooperative strategies for problem solving were discussed. The contributions collected in this book were strictly peer reviewed by at least three members of the international programme committee, to whom we are indebted for their support and assistance. The topics covered by the contributionsincludenature-inspiredtechniqueslikeGeneticAlgorithms, Ant Colonies, Amorphous Computing, Arti?cial Immune Systems, Evolutionary Robotics, Evolvable Systems, Membrane Computing, Quantum Computing, Software Self Assembly, Swarm Intelligence, etc

The interest in climbing and walking robots (CLAWAR) has intensified in recent years, and novel solutions for complex and very diverse applications have been anticipated by means of significant progress in this area of - botics. Moreover, the amalgamation of original ideas and related inno- tions, search for new potential applications and the use of state of the art support technologies permit to foresee an important step forward and a significant socio-economic impact of advanced robot technology in the - ture. This is leading to the creation and consolidation of a mobile service robotics sector where most of the robotics activities are foreseen in the - ture. The technology is now maturing to become of real benefit to society and methods of realizing this potential quickly are being eagerly explored. Robot standards and modularity are key to this and form key components of the research presented here. CLAWAR 2005 is the eighth in a series of international conferences - ganised annually since 1998 with the aim to report on latest research and development findings and to provide a forum for scientific discussion and debate within the mobile service robotics community. The series has grown in its popularity significantly over the years, and has attracted - searchers and developers from across the globe. The CLAWAR 2005 p- ceedings reports state of the art scientific and developmental findings p- sented during the CLAWAR 2005 conference in 131 technical presentations by authors from 27 countries covering the five continents.

In this book the use of ER techniques for the design of self-organising group behaviours, for both simulated and real robots is introduced. The book tries to mediate between two apparently opposed perspectives: engineering and cognitive science. The experiments presented in the book and the results obtained contribute to the assessment of ER not only as a design tool, but also as a methodology for modelling and understanding intelligent adaptive behaviours.

This book on computing systems for autonomous driving takes a comprehensive look at the state-of-the-art computing technologies, including computing frameworks, algorithm deployment optimizations, systems runtime optimizations, dataset and benchmarking, simulators, hardware platforms, and smart infrastructures. The objectives of level 4 and level 5 autonomous driving require colossal improvement in the computing for this cyber-physical system. Beginning with a definition of computing systems for autonomous driving, this book introduces promising research topics and serves as a useful starting point for those interested in starting in the field. In addition to the current landscape, the authors examine the remaining open challenges to achieve L4/L5 autonomous driving. Computing Systems for Autonomous Driving provides a good introduction for researchers and prospective practitioners in the field. The book can also serve as a useful reference for university courses on autonomous vehicle technologies.This book on computing systems for autonomous driving takes a comprehensive look at the state-of-the-art computing technologies, including computing frameworks, algorithm deployment optimizations, systems runtime optimizations, dataset and benchmarking, simulators, hardware platforms, and smart infrastructures. The objectives of level 4 and level 5 autonomous driving require colossal improvement in the computing for this cyber-physical system. Beginning with a definition of computing systems for autonomous driving, this book introduces promising research topics and serves as a useful starting point for those interested in starting in the field. In addition to the current landscape, the authors examine the remaining open challenges to achieve L4/L5 autonomous driving. Computing Systems for Autonomous Driving provides a good introduction for researchers and prospective practitioners in the field. The book can also serve as a useful reference for university courses on autonomous vehicle technologies.

This book demonstrates bene?ts of abstract and qualitative reasoning that have not received much attention in the context of autonomous robotics before. Bremen, Christian Freksa December 2007 Director of the SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition Preface This book addresses spatial representations and reasoning techniques for - bile robot mapping, providing an analysis of fundamental representations and processes involved. A spatial representation based on shape information is p- posed and shape analysis techniques are developed to tackle the correspondence problem in robot mapping. A general mathematical formulation is presented to provide the formal ground for an e?cient matching of con?gurations of objects. This book is a slightly revised version of my doctoral thesis submitted to the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Bremen, Germany. Manycontributeto the developmentofa dissertation,butsomeofthemstand out. Christian Freksa, I thank you for supporting and encouraging my work, for introducing me to interdisciplinary work, for giving me the freedom to develop this dissertation, and for providing an enjoyable atmosphere to work in. Longin Jan Latecki, thank you for countless in-depth discussions helping me to develop andtopositionmywork,forthefruitfulcollaboration,andformakingaresearch stay possible that has been very valuable to me. I thank the research groups in Bremen and Philadelphia for helpful discussions and feedback, in particular Jan Oliver Wallgrun. I also thank Kai-Florian Richter, Sven Bertel, and Lutz Frommberger for feedback on this work. Robert Ross, thank you for helping to proof-read this dissertation.

The essays in this book, written by researchers from both humanities and science, describe various theoretical and experimental approaches to adding medical ethics to a machine, what design features are necessary in order to achieve this, philosophical and practical questions concerning justice, rights, decision-making and responsibility in medical contexts, and accurately modeling essential physician-machine-patient relationships.

In medical settings, machines are in close proximity with human beings: with patients who are in vulnerable states of health, who have disabilities of various kinds, with the very young or very old and with medical professionals. Machines in these contexts are undertaking important medical tasks that require emotional sensitivity, knowledge of medical codes, human dignity and privacy.

As machine technology advances, ethical concerns become more urgent: should medical machines be programmed to follow a code of medical ethics? What theory or theories should constrain medical machine conduct? What design features are required? Should machines share responsibility with humans for the ethical consequences of medical actions? How ought clinical relationships involving machines to be modeled? Is a capacity for empathy and emotion detection necessary? What about consciousness?

This collection is the first book that addresses these 21st-century concerns.

This volume constitutes the results of the International Conference on Underwater Environment, MOQESM'14, held at "Le Quartz" Conference Center in Brest, France, on October 14-15, 2014, within the framework of the 9th Sea Tech Week, International Marine Science and Technology Event. The objective of MOQESM'14 was to bring together researchers from both academia and industry, interested in marine robotics and hydrography with application to the coastal environment mapping and underwater infrastructures surveys. The common thread of the conference is the combination of technical control, perception, and localization, typically used in robotics, with the methods of mapping and bathymetry. The papers presented in this book focus on two main topics. Firstly, coastal and infrastructure mapping is addressed, focusing not only on hydrographic systems, but also on positioning systems, bathymetry, and remote sensing. The proposed methods rely on acoustic sensors such as side scan sonars, multibeam echo sounders, phase-measuring bathymetric sonars, as well as optical systems such as underwater laser scanners. Accurate underwater positioning is also addressed in the case of the use of a single acoustic beacon, and the latest advances in increasing the vertical precision of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) are also presented. Most of the above mentioned works are closely related to autonomous marine vehicles. Consequently, the second part of the book describes some works concerning the methods associated with such type of vehicles. The selected papers focus on autonomous surface or underwater vehicles, detailing new approaches for localization, modeling, control, mapping, obstacle detection and avoidance, surfacing, and software development. Some of these works imply acoustics sensing as well as image processing. Set membership methods are also used in some papers. The applications of the work presented in this book concern in particular oceanography, monitoring of oil and gas infrastructures, and military field.

The science associated with the development of artificial sen sory systems is occupied primarily with determining how information about the world can be extracted from sensory data. For example, computational vision is, for the most part, concerned with the de velopment of algorithms for distilling information about the world and recognition of various objects in the environ (e. g. localization ment) from visual images (e. g. photographs or video frames). There are often a multitude of ways in which a specific piece of informa tion about the world can be obtained from sensory data. A subarea of research into sensory systems has arisen which is concerned with methods for combining these various information sources. This field is known as data fusion, or sensor fusion. The literature on data fusion is extensive, indicating the intense interest in this topic, but is quite chaotic. There are no accepted approaches, save for a few special cases, and many of the best methods are ad hoc. This book represents our attempt at providing a mathematical foundation upon which data fusion algorithms can be constructed and analyzed. The methodology that we present in this text is mo tivated by a strong belief in the importance of constraints in sensory information processing systems. In our view, data fusion is best un derstood as the embedding of multiple constraints on the solution to a sensory information processing problem into the solution pro cess."

The vision of seamless human-robot interaction in our everyday life that allows for tight cooperation between human and robot has not become reality yet. However, the recent increase in technology maturity finally made it possible to realize systems of high integration, advanced sensorial capabilities and enhanced power to cross this barrier and merge living spaces of humans and robot workspaces to at least a certain extent. Together with the increasing industrial effort to realize first commercial service robotics products this makes it necessary to properly address one of the most fundamental questions of Human-Robot Interaction: How to ensure safety in human-robot coexistence? In this authoritative monograph, the essential question about the necessary requirements for a safe robot is addressed in depth and from various perspectives. The approach taken in this book focuses on the biomechanical level of injury assessment, addresses the physical evaluation of robot-human impacts, and isolates the major factors that cause human injuries. This assessment is the basis for the design and exploration of various measures to improve safety in human-robot interaction. They range from control schemes for collision detection, reflex reaction, and avoidance to the investigation of novel joint designs that equip robots with fundamentally new capabilities. By the depth of its analysis and exceptionally salient experimental work, this monograph offers one of the most comprehensive treatments of the safety challenge in the field.

This fascinating book examines some of the characteristics of technological/engineering models that are likely to be unfamiliar to those who are interested primarily in the history and philosophy of science and mathematics, and which differentiate technological models from scientific and mathematical ones. Themes that are highlighted include:
the role of language: the models developed for engineering design have resulted in new ways of talking about technological systems
communities of practice: related to the previous point, particular engineering communities have particular ways of sharing and developing knowledge
graphical (re)presentation: engineers have developed many ways of reducing quite complex mathematical models to more simple representations
reification: highly abstract mathematical models are turned into 'objects' that can be manipulated almost like components of a physical system
machines: not only the currently ubiquitous digital computer, but also older analogue devices - slide rules, physical models, wind tunnels and other small-scale simulators, as well as mechanical, electrical and electronic analogue computers
mathematics and modelling as a bridging tool between disciplines
This book studies primarily modelling in technological practice. It is worth noting that models of the type considered in the book are not always highly valued in formal engineering education at university level, which often takes an "applied science" approach close to that of the natural sciences (something that can result in disaffection on the part of students). Yet in an informal context, such as laboratories, industrial placements, and so on, a very different situation obtains. A number of chapters considers such epistemological aspects, as well as the status of different types of models within the engineering education community.
The book will be of interest to practising engineers and technologists; sociologists of science and technology; and historians and philosophers of science and mathematics. It will also be written in a way that will be accessible to non-specialists."

During the last years there has been an increasing interest in the area of service robots. Under this category we find robots working in tasks such as elderly care, guiding, office and domestic assistance, inspection, and many more. Service robots usually work in indoor environments designed for humans, with offices and houses being some of the most typical examples. These environments are typically divided into places with different functionalities like corridors, rooms or doorways. The ability to learn such semantic categories from sensor data enables a mobile robot to extend its representation of the environment, and to improve its capabilities. As an example, natural language terms like corridor or room can be used to indicate the position of the robot in a more intuitive way when communicating with humans. This book presents several approaches to enable a mobile robot to categorize places in indoor environments. The categories are indicated by terms which represent the different regions in these environments. The objective of this work is to enable mobile robots to perceive the spatial divisions in indoor environments in a similar way as people do. This is an interesting step forward to the problem of moving the perception of robots closer to the perception of humans. Many approaches introduced in this book come from the area of pattern recognition and classification. The applied methods have been adapted to solve the specific problem of place recognition. In this regard, this work is a useful reference to students and researchers who want to introduce classification techniques to help solve similar problems in mobile robotics.

This volume contains the papers of the 7th International Workshop on Medical and Service Robots (MESROB) which was held in Basel, Switzerland, on June 7-9, 2021. The main topics include: design of medical devices, kinematics and dynamics for medical robotics, exoskeletons and prostheses, anthropomorphic hands, therapeutic robots and rehabilitation, cognitive robots, humanoid and service robots, assistive robots and elderly assistance, surgical robots, human-robot interfaces, haptic devices, medical treatments, medical lasers, and surgical planning and navigation. The contributions, which were selected by means of a rigorous international peer-review process, highlight numerous exciting ideas that will spur novel research directions and foster multidisciplinary collaboration among different specialists, demonstrating that medical and service robotics will drive the technological and societal change in the coming decades.

This book offers a timely and comprehensive snapshot of research and developments in the fields of dynamic systems and control engineering. Covering a wide range of theoretical and practical issues, the contributions describes a number of different control approaches, such as PID control, adaptive control, nonlinear systems and control, intelligent monitoring and control based on fuzzy and neural systems, robust control systems, and real time control, among others. Sensors and actuators, measurement systems, renewable energy systems, aeronautic and aerospace systems as well as industrial control and automation, are also comprehensively covered. Based on the proceedings of the 15th APCA International Conference on Automatic Control and Soft Computing, held on July 6-8, 2022, in Caparica, Portugal, the book offers a timely and thoroughly survey of the latest research in the fields of dynamic systems and automatic control engineering, and a source of inspiration for researchers and professionals worldwide.

The book presents an overview of current research on biologically inspired autonomous robotics from the perspective of some of the most relevant researchers in this area. The book crosses several boundaries in the field of robotics and the closely related field of artificial life. The key aim throughout the book is to obtain autonomy at different levels. From the basic motor behavior in some exotic robot architectures right through to the planning of complex behaviors or the evolution of robot control structures, the book explores different degrees and definitions of autonomous behavior. These behaviors are supported by a wide variety of modeling techniques: structural grammars, neural networks, and fuzzy logic and evolution underlies many of the development processes. Thus this text can be used by scientists and students interested in these areas and provides a general view of the field for a more general audience.

The text focuses on the theory, design, and implementation of the Internet of Things (IoT), in a modern communication system. It will be useful to senior undergraduate, graduate students, and researchers in diverse fields domains including electrical engineering, electronics and communications engineering, computer engineering, and information technology. Features: Presents all the necessary information on the Internet of Things in modern computing Examines antenna integration challenges and constraints in the Internet of Things devices Discusses advanced Internet of Things networks and advanced controllers required for modern architecture Explores security and privacy challenges for the Internet of Things-based health care system Covers implementation of Internet of Things security protocols such as MQTT, Advanced Message Queuing Protocol, XMPP, and DSS The text addresses the issues and challenges in implementing communication and security protocols for IoT in modern computing. It further highlights the applications of IoT in diverse areas including remote health monitoring, remote monitoring of vehicle data and environmental characteristics, industry 4.0, 5G communications, and Next-gen IoT networks. The text presents case studies on IoT in modern digital computing. It will serve as an ideal reference text for senior undergraduate, graduate students, and academic researchers in diverse fields domains including electrical engineering, electronics and communications engineering, computer engineering, and information technology.

This book looks at the common problems both human and robotic hands encounter when controlling the large number of joints, actuators and sensors required to efficiently perform motor tasks such as object exploration, manipulation and grasping. The authors adopt an integrated approach to explore the control of the hand based on sensorimotor synergies that can be applied in both neuroscience and robotics. Hand synergies are based on goal-directed, combined muscle and kinematic activation leading to a reduction of the dimensionality of the motor and sensory space, presenting a highly effective solution for the fast and simplified design of artificial systems. Presented in two parts, the first part, Neuroscience, provides the theoretical and experimental foundations to describe the synergistic organization of the human hand. The second part, Robotics, Models and Sensing Tools, exploits the framework of hand synergies to better control and design robotic hands and haptic/sensing systems/tools, using a reduced number of control inputs/sensors, with the goal of pushing their effectiveness close to the natural one. Human and Robot Hands provides a valuable reference for students, researchers and designers who are interested in the study and design of the artificial hand.

Human-Robot Interaction: Safety, Standardization, and Benchmarking provides a comprehensive introduction to the new scenarios emerging where humans and robots interact in various environments and applications on a daily basis. The focus is on the current status and foreseeable implications of robot safety, approaching these issues from the standardization and benchmarking perspectives. Featuring contributions from leading experts, the book presents state-of-the-art research, and includes real-world applications and use cases. It explores the key leading sectors-robotics, service robotics, and medical robotics-and elaborates on the safety approaches that are being developed for effective human-robot interaction, including physical robot-human contacts, collaboration in task execution, workspace sharing, human-aware motion planning, and exploring the landscape of relevant standards and guidelines. Features Presenting a comprehensive introduction to human-robot interaction in a number of domains, including industrial robotics, medical robotics, and service robotics Focusing on robot safety standards and benchmarking Providing insight into current developments in international standards Featuring contributions from leading experts, actively pursuing new robot development

This volume contains 50 papers presented at the 12th International Symposium of Robotics Research, which took place October 2005 in San Francisco, CA. Coverage includes: physical human-robot interaction, humanoids, mechanisms and design, simultaneous localization and mapping, field robots, robotic vision, robot design and control, underwater robotics, learning and adaptive behavior, networked robotics, and interfaces and interaction.

This book provides an introduction to the emerging field of planning and decision making for aerial robots. An aerial robot is the ultimate form of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, an aircraft endowed with built-in intelligence, requiring no direct human control and able to perform a specific task. It must be able to fly within a partially structured environment, to react and adapt to changing environmental conditions and to accommodate for the uncertainty that exists in the physical world. An aerial robot can be termed as a physical agent that exists and flies in the real 3D world, can sense its environment and act on it to achieve specific goals. So throughout this book, an aerial robot will also be termed as an agent.

Fundamental problems in aerial robotics include the tasks of spatial motion, spatial sensing and spatial reasoning. Reasoning in complex environments represents a difficult problem. The issues specific to spatial reasoning are planning and decision making. Planning deals with the trajectory algorithmic development based on the available information, while decision making determines priorities and evaluates potential environmental uncertainties.

The issues specific to planning and decision making for aerial robots in their environment are examined in this book and categorized as follows: motion planning, deterministic decision making, decision making under uncertainty and finally multi-robot planning. A variety of techniques are presented in this book, and a number of relevant case studies are examined. The topics considered in this book are multidisciplinary in nature and lie at the intersection of Robotics, Control Theory, Operational Research and Artificial Intelligence.

Presents sensor specification, theory of operation, sensor design, and application criteria Provides background plus specific information for practicing engineers who want to understand sensors Includes a complete chapter on industrial sensor communication protocols Explains temperature sensitivity, how to determine, and how to avoid Discusses how to understand and utilize sensor specifications

This book constitutes the proceedings of the third international conference AsiaHaptics 2018, held in Songdo, Korea. It presents the state-of-the-art of the diverse haptics (touch)-related research, including perception and illusion, development of haptics devices, and applications to a wide variety of fields such as education, medicine, telecommunication, navigation and entertainment. This book is a valuable resource not only for active haptics researchers, but also for general readers wishing to understand the status quo in this interdisciplinary area of science and technology.

This book gathers papers from the 23rd International Forum on Advanced Microsystems for Automotive Applications (AMAA 2020) held online from Berlin, Germany, on May 26-27, 2020. Focusing on intelligent system solutions for auto mobility and beyond, it discusses in detail innovations and technologies enabling electrification, automation and diversification, as well as strategies for a better integration of vehicles into the networks of traffic, data and power. Further, the book addresses other relevant topics, including the role of human factors and safety issues in automated driving, solutions for shared mobility, as well as automated bus transport in rural areas. Implications of current circumstances, such as those generated by climate change, on the future development of auto mobility, are also analysed, providing researchers, practitioners and policy makers with an authoritative snapshot of the state-of-the-art, and a source of inspiration for future developments and collaborations.

This book focuses on the fundamentals of deep learning along with reporting on the current state-of-art research on deep learning. In addition, it provides an insight of deep neural networks in action with illustrative coding examples. Deep learning is a new area of machine learning research which has been introduced with the objective of moving ML closer to one of its original goals, i.e. artificial intelligence. Deep learning was developed as an ML approach to deal with complex input-output mappings. While traditional methods successfully solve problems where final value is a simple function of input data, deep learning techniques are able to capture composite relations between non-immediately related fields, for example between air pressure recordings and English words, millions of pixels and textual description, brand-related news and future stock prices and almost all real world problems. Deep learning is a class of nature inspired machine learning algorithms that uses a cascade of multiple layers of nonlinear processing units for feature extraction and transformation. Each successive layer uses the output from the previous layer as input. The learning may be supervised (e.g. classification) and/or unsupervised (e.g. pattern analysis) manners. These algorithms learn multiple levels of representations that correspond to different levels of abstraction by resorting to some form of gradient descent for training via backpropagation. Layers that have been used in deep learning include hidden layers of an artificial neural network and sets of propositional formulas. They may also include latent variables organized layer-wise in deep generative models such as the nodes in deep belief networks and deep boltzmann machines. Deep learning is part of state-of-the-art systems in various disciplines, particularly computer vision, automatic speech recognition (ASR) and human action recognition.

This book focuses on pose estimation algorithms for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). After introducing readers to the state of the art, it describes a joint endeavor involving attitude and position estimation, and details the development of a nonlinear attitude observer that employs inertial and magnetic field data and is suitable for underwater use. In turn, it shows how the estimated attitude constitutes an essential type of input for UKF-based position estimators that combine position, depth, and velocity measurements. The book discusses the possibility of including real-time estimates of sea currents in the developed estimators, and highlights simulations that combine real-world navigation data and experimental test campaigns to evaluate the performance of the resulting solutions. In addition to proposing novel algorithms for estimating the attitudes and positions of AUVs using low-cost sensors and taking into account magnetic disturbances and ocean currents, the book provides readers with extensive information and a source of inspiration for the further development and testing of navigation algorithms for AUVs.