An introduction to the science and practice of autonomous robots that reviews over 300 current systems and examines the underlying technology.

Autonomous robots are robots which can perform desired tasks in unstructured environments without continuous human guidance. Many kinds of robots have some degree of autonomy. Different robots can be autonomous in different ways. A high degree of autonomy is particularly desirable in fields such as space exploration, where communication delays and interruptions are unavoidable. Some modern factory robots are "autonomous" within the strict confines of their direct environment. The exact orientation and position of the next object of work and (in the more advanced factories) even the type of object and the required task must be determined. This can vary unpredictably (at least from the robot's point of view). One important area of robotics research is to enable the robot to cope with its environment whether this be on land, underwater, in the air, underground, or in space. This book presents the latest research from around the globe.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots, SIMPAR 2008, held in Venice, Italy, in November 2008. The 29 revised full papers and 21 revised poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 42 submissions. The papers address all current issues of robotics applications and simulation environments thereof, such as 3D robot simulation, reliability, scalability and validation of robot simulation, simulated sensors and actuators, offline simulation of robot design, online simulation with real­time constraints, simulation with software/hardware-in-the-loop, middleware for robotics, modeling framework for robots and environments, testing and validation of robot control software, standardization for robotic services, communication infrastructures in distributed robotics, interaction between sensor networks and robots, human robot interaction, and multi­robot. The papers are organized in topical sections on simulation, programming, and applications.

The principal chapters of this book form a collection of technical articles sp- ning many areas of research in robotics, these are followed by a set of short r- iniscences and tributes written by former students of Professor George A. Bekey. Professor Bekey, a pioneer in robotics, retired from the University of Southern C- ifornia (USC) in 2002 after serving on its faculty for forty years. He maintains an association with USC as University Professor Emeritus. Professor Bekey turned 80 in June 2008 - this is his Festschrift. As one of Professor Bekey’s former students, it has been my privilege to know him for many years. This book represents the collective warm feelings of his former students, who remember their association with him in the fondest terms. Part I of this book is composed of technical chapters representing threads of active robotics research knitted loosely together. In many cases the themes of the chapters have their origins in the work the authors did when they were graduate students with Professor Bekey. These chapters are written for the reader interested in a sampling of modern research in Autonomous Robots. It is my hope that, for the serious reader, these chapters will serve as invitations to explore the ?eld via further reading and research.

A comprehensive introduction to the field of autonomous robotics aimed at upper-level undergraduates and offering additional online resources. Textbooks that provide a broad algorithmic perspective on the mechanics and dynamics of robots almost unfailingly serve students at the graduate level. Introduction to Autonomous Robots offers a much-needed resource for teaching third- and fourth-year undergraduates the computational fundamentals behind the design and control of autonomous robots. The authors use a class-tested and accessible approach to present progressive, step-by-step development concepts, alongside a wide range of real-world examples and fundamental concepts in mechanisms, sensing and actuation, computation, and uncertainty. Throughout, the authors balance the impact of hardware (mechanism, sensor, actuator) and software (algorithms) in teaching robot autonomy. Features: Rigorous and tested in the classroom Written for engineering and computer science undergraduates with a sophomore-level understanding of linear algebra, probability theory, trigonometry, and statistics QR codes in the text guide readers to online lecture videos and animations Topics include: basic concepts in robotic mechanisms like locomotion and grasping, plus the resulting forces; operation principles of sensors and actuators; basic algorithms for vision and feature detection; an introduction to artificial neural networks, including convolutional and recurrent variants Extensive appendices focus on project-based curricula, pertinent areas of mathematics, backpropagation, writing a research paper, and other topics A growing library of exercises in an open-source, platform-independent simulation (Webots)

Expounding on the results of the author's work with the US Army Research Office, DARPA, the Office of Naval Research, and various defense industry contractors, Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots explores how to produce an "artificial conscience" in a new class of robots, humane-oids, which are robots that can potentially perform more et

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots, SIMPAR 2014, held in Bergamo, Italy, in October 2014. The 49 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 62 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on simulation, modeling, programming, architectures, methods and tools, and systems and applications.

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.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots, SIMPAR 2012, held in Tsukuba, Japan, in November 2012. The 33 revised full papers and presented together with 3 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 46 submissions. Ten papers describe design of complex behaviors of autonomous robots, 9 address software layers, 8 papers refer to related modeling and learning. The papers are organized in topical sections on mobile robots, software modeling and architecture and humanoid and biped robots.