The First International Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots (SIMPAR 2008) was held during November 3-6, 2008, in Venice, at Telecom Future Center, with a special session held in Padua, in the Archivio Antico of the university. The SIMPAR Conference was promoted to o?er to a selected number of - searchers the possibility to discuss, in a highly stimulating atmosphere, how to identify andsolvethe key issues necessaryto ease the development of robotso- ware, andboosta smoothshifting ofresults fromsimulationto realapplications. Novel robotics applications driven by society and industry call for the dev- opmentofsystemsofever-increasingcomplexity.Systemswithslidingautonomy, humanoid robots, distributed robots, and mobile sensor networks are just a few examples of this exciting area.But unfortunately, steady improvements in robot hardware have not been matched by corresponding advancements in robot so- ware. Besides fundamental open problems still waiting for sound answers, the lack of broadly accepted and reusable development tools, libraries, standards, and algorithms is one of the main technological obstacles towards the e?cient development of this new generation of robotics applications. Hence, simulationenvironmentsabletoreplicatearobot'ssensingandmotion abilitiesandtheirinteractionwiththephysicalworldareplayinganessentialrole in reducing the development time and cost of large-scale autonomous systems. Notwithstanding, their use is still regarded by many as suspicious. Seamless migration of code from general-purpose simulators to real-world systems is still ararecircumstance, duetothecomplexityofrobot, world, sensors, andactuators modeling. The above challenges drive the quest for next-generationdevelopment methods in robotics. We are convinced that SIMPAR has succeeded in giving a ?rst answer to this search, and it can be followed by proper scienti?c and engineering actions in the near future

Why are the many highly capable autonomous robots that have been promised for novel applications driven by society, industry, and research not available - day despite the tremendous progress in robotics science and systems achieved during the last decades? Unfortunately, steady improvements in speci?c robot abilities and robot hardware have not been matched by corresponding robot performance in real world environments. This is mainly due to the lack of - vancements in robot software that master the development of robotic systems of ever increasing complexity. In addition, fundamental open problems are still awaiting sound answers while the development of new robotics applications s- fersfromthelackofwidelyusedtools,libraries,andalgorithmsthataredesigned in a modular and performant manner with standardized interfaces. Simulation environments are playing a major role not only in reducing development time and cost, e. g. , by systematic software- or hardware-in-the-loop testing of robot performance, but also in exploring new types of robots and applications. H- ever,their use may still be regardedwith skepticism. Seamless migrationof code using robot simulators to real-world systems is still a rare circumstance, due to the complexity of robot, world, sensor, and actuator modeling. These challenges drive the quest for the next generation of methodologies and tools for robot development. The objective of the International Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and ProgrammingforAutonomous Robots (SIMPAR) is to o?er a unique forum for these topics and to bring together researchersfrom academia and industry to identify and solve the key issues necessary to ease the development of increasingly complex robot software.