This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th Conference on Advances in Autonomous Robotics, TAROS 2013, held in Oxford, UK, in August 2013. The 36 revised full papers presented together with 25 extended abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from 89 submissions. The papers cover various topics such as artificial intelligence, bio-inspired and aerial robotics, computer vision, control, humanoid and robotic arm, swarm robotics, verification and ethics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th Conference on Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems, TAROS 2012 and the 15th Robot World Congress, FIRA 2012, held as joint conference in Bristol, UK, in August 2012. The 36 revised full papers presented together with 25 extended abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from 89 submissions. The papers cover various topics in the field of autonomous robotics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference Towards Autonomous Robotics Systems, TAROS 2011, held in Sheffield, UK, in August/September 2011.
The 32 revised full papers presented together with 29 two-page abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from 94 submissions. Among the topics addressed are robot navigation, robot learning, human-robot interaction, robot control, mobile robots, reinforcement learning, robot vehicles, swarm robotic systems, etc.

An important title in the 'Engineering Research Series', "Strategies for Collective Minimalist Mobile Robots" presents research on one of the most exciting areas of technology associated with robotics - co-ordinated teams, or groups, of tiny robots. These act colonially and behave as a body, or collect data individually, to feed information to a single data retrieval point, offering a network of information.

Intercommunication between many tiny robots allows for problem areas to be detected and concentrated upon, bringing the pack of robots together.

The developments and research reported here show the ways in which engineers are trying to mimic biological systems and behaviour to find solutions to engineering problems. Dr Melhuish's research aims to analyse various naturally occurring collective systems as models for robotic system development. He applied the results of observations of biological system behaviour among social insects, such as ants, to robot activity. Much of "Strategies for Collective Minimalist Mobile Robots" is concerned with a review of the remarkable achievements of groups of simple insects and the observation that collective achievement can far exceed the sum of individual performances. Although at an early stage of development and management, collective robotic technology has created a high level of interest from those involved in R & D among professional engineers.

COMPLETE CONTENTS: IntroductionBackground, issues, and related workMinimalist locomotionCollective minimalist movementMinimalist regulation of group sizeCollective minimalist action on the environmentCollective minimalist clusteringCollective minimalist sorting and segregationConclusions and further work.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th Conference on Advances in Autonomous Robotics, TAROS 2014, held in Birmingham, UK, in September 2014. The 23 revised full papers presented together with 9 extended abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from 48 submissions. The overall program covers various aspects of robotics, including navigation, planning, sensing and perception, flying and swarm robots, ethics, humanoid robotics, human-robot interaction, and social robotics.