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Robotics is at the cusp of dramatic transformation. Increasingly
complex robots with unprecedented autonomy are finding new
applications, from medical surgery, to construction, to home
services. Against this background, the algorithmic foundations of
robotics are becoming more crucial than ever, in order to build
robots that are fast, safe, reliable, and adaptive. Algorithms
enable robots to perceive, plan, control, and learn. The design and
analysis of robot algorithms raise new fundamental questions that
span computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical
engineering, and mathematics. These algorithms are also finding
applications beyond robotics, for example, in modeling molecular
motion and creating digital characters for video games and
architectural simulation. The Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations
of Robotics (WAFR) is a highly selective meeting of leading
researchers in the field of robot algorithms. Since its creation in
1994, it has published some of the field's most important and
lasting contributions. This book contains the proceedings of the
9th WAFR, held on December 13-15, 2010 at the National University
of Singapore. The 24 papers included in this book span a wide
variety of topics from new theoretical insights to novel
applications.
Robotics is at the cusp of dramatic transformation. Increasingly
complex robots with unprecedented autonomy are finding new
applications, from medical surgery, to construction, to home
services. Against this background, the algorithmic foundations of
robotics are becoming more crucial than ever, in order to build
robots that are fast, safe, reliable, and adaptive. Algorithms
enable robots to perceive, plan, control, and learn. The design and
analysis of robot algorithms raise new fundamental questions that
span computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical
engineering, and mathematics. These algorithms are also finding
applications beyond robotics, for example, in modeling molecular
motion and creating digital characters for video games and
architectural simulation. The Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations
of Robotics (WAFR) is a highly selective meeting of leading
researchers in the field of robot algorithms. Since its creation in
1994, it has published some of the field's most important and
lasting contributions. This book contains the proceedings of the
9th WAFR, held on December 13-15, 2010 at the National University
of Singapore. The 24 papers included in this book span a wide
variety of topics from new theoretical insights to novel
applications.
One of the ultimate goals in Robotics is to create autonomous
robots. Such robots will accept high-level descriptions of tasks
and will execute them without further human intervention. The input
descriptions will specify what the user wants done rather than how
to do it. The robots will be any kind of versatile mechanical
device equipped with actuators and sensors under the control of a
computing system. Making progress toward autonomous robots is of
major practical inter est in a wide variety of application domains
including manufacturing, construction, waste management, space
exploration, undersea work, as sistance for the disabled, and
medical surgery. It is also of great technical interest, especially
for Computer Science, because it raises challenging and rich
computational issues from which new concepts of broad useful ness
are likely to emerge. Developing the technologies necessary for
autonomous robots is a formidable undertaking with deep interweaved
ramifications in auto mated reasoning, perception and control. It
raises many important prob lems. One of them - motion planning - is
the central theme of this book. It can be loosely stated as
follows: How can a robot decide what motions to perform in order to
achieve goal arrangements of physical objects? This capability is
eminently necessary since, by definition, a robot accomplishes
tasks by moving in the real world. The minimum one would expect
from an autonomous robot is the ability to plan its x Preface own
motions."
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