This volume contains papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on "Sensors and Sensory Systems for Advanced Robots", which was held in Maratea, Italy, during the week Apri I 28 - May 3, 1986. Participants in the ARW, who came from eleven NATO and two non-NATO countries, represented an i nternat i ona I assortment of d i st i ngu i shed research centers in industry, government and academia. Purpose of the Workshop was to rev i ew the state of the art of sensing for advanced robots, to discuss basic concepts and new ideas on the use of sensors for robot control and to provide recommendations for future research in this area, There IS an almost unanimous consensus among invest i gators in the fie I d of robot i cs that the add i t i on of sensory capabi I ities represents the "natural" evolution of present industrial robots, as wei I as the necessary premise to the development of advanced robots for nonindustrial app I i cat ions. However, a number of conceptua I and techn i ca I problems sti I I challenge the practical implementation and widespread appl ication of sensor-based robot control techn i ques. Cruc i a I among those prob I ems is the ava i lab iii ty of adequate sensors.

Most industrial robots today have little or no sensory capability. Feedback is limited to information about joint positions, combined with a few interlock and timing signals. These robots can function only in an environment where the objects to be manipulated are precisely located in the proper position for the robot to grasp (i. e. , in a structured environment). For many present industrial applications, this level of performance has been adequate. With the increasing demand for high performance sensor-based robot manipulators in assembly tasks, meeting this demand and challenge can only be achieved through the consideration of: 1) efficient acquisition and processing of intemaVextemal sensory information, 2) utilization and integration of sensory information from various sensors (tactile, force, and vision) to acquire knowledge in a changing environment, 3) exploitation of inherent robotic parallel algorithms and efficient VLSI architectures for robotic computations, and finally 4) system integration into a working and functioning robotic system. This is the intent of the Workshop on Sensor-Based Robots: Algorithms and Architectures - to study the fundamental research issues and problems associated with sensor-based robot manipulators and to propose approaches and solutions from various viewpoints in improving present day robot manipula tors in the areas of sensor fusion and integration, sensory information processing, and parallel algorithms and architectures for robotic computations.

Advanced robot systems require sensory information to enable them to make decisions and to carry out actions in a versatile, autonomous way. Humans make considerable use of information derived through touch, and an emerging domain of robot sensing is tactile sensing. This book considers various aspects of tactile sensing, from hardware design through to the use of tactile data in exploratory situations using a multi-fingered robot hand.In the first part of the book, the current state of progress of tactile sensing is surveyed, and it is found that the field is still in an early stage of development. Next, some fundamental issues in planar elasticity, concerning the interaction between tactile sensors and the environment, are presented. Having established how the basic data can be derived from the sensors, the issues of what form tactile sensors should take, and how they should be used, are considered. This is particularly important given the infancy of this field. The human tactile system is examined, and then biological touch and its implications for robotics is looked at. Some experiments in dextrous manipulation using a robot hand are described, which apply some of these results. The integration of tactile sensors into a complete system is also considered, and another, novel, approach for using touch sensing in a flexible assembly machine is described.Both basic material and new research results are provided in this book, thus catering to different levels of readers. The chapters by world experts in different aspects of the field are integrated well into one volume. The editor and authors have produced a thorough and in-depth survey of all work in robot tactile sensing, making the book essential reading for all researchers in this emergent field.

The second edition of this handbook provides a state-of-the-art overview on the various aspects in the rapidly developing field of robotics. Reaching for the human frontier, robotics is vigorously engaged in the growing challenges of new emerging domains. Interacting, exploring, and working with humans, the new generation of robots will increasingly touch people and their lives. The credible prospect of practical robots among humans is the result of the scientific endeavour of a half a century of robotic developments that established robotics as a modern scientific discipline. The ongoing vibrant expansion and strong growth of the field during the last decade has fueled this second edition of the Springer Handbook of Robotics. The first edition of the handbook soon became a landmark in robotics publishing and won the American Association of Publishers PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics as well as the organization’s Award for Engineering & Technology. The second edition of the handbook, edited by two internationally renowned scientists with the support of an outstanding team of seven part editors and more than 200 authors, continues to be an authoritative reference for robotics researchers, newcomers to the field, and scholars from related disciplines. The contents have been restructured to achieve four main objectives: the enlargement of foundational topics for robotics, the enlightenment of design of various types of robotic systems, the extension of the treatment on robots moving in the environment, and the enrichment of advanced robotics applications. Further to an extensive update, fifteen new chapters have been introduced on emerging topics, and a new generation of authors have joined the handbook’s team. A novel addition to the second edition is a comprehensive collection of multimedia references to more than 700 videos, which bring valuable insight into the contents. The videos can be viewed directly augmented into the text with a smartphone or tablet using a unique and specially designed app. Springer Handbook of Robotics Multimedia Extension Portal: http://handbookofrobotics.org/

This book contains the written record of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Traditional and Non-Traditional Robotic Sensors held in the Hotel Villa del Mare, Maratea, Italy, August 28 - September 1, 1989. This workshop was organized under the auspicies of the NATO Special Program on Sensory Systems for Robotic Control. Professor Frans Groen from the University of Amsterdam and Dr. Gert Hirzinger from the German Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR) served as members of the organizing committee for this workshop. Research in the area of robotic sensors is necessary in order to support a wide range of applications, including: industrial automation, space robotics, image analysis, microelectronics, and intelligent sensors. This workshop focused on the role of traditional and non-traditional sensors in robotics. In particular, the following three topics were explored: - Sensor development and technology, - Multisensor integration techniques, - Application area requirements which motivate sensor development directions. This workshop'brought together experts from NATO countries to discuss recent developments in these three areas. Many new directions (or new directions on old problems) were proposed. Existing sensors should be pushed into new application domains such as medical robotics and space robotics.

This book is the outgrowth of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop, held in Milton Keynes (United Kingdom) in the summer of 1990. The workshop brought together about 30 world leaders in the use of advanced technologies in the teaching of mathematics and science. Many of these participants commented that the workshop was one of the more productive and exciting workshops that they had attended. It was not uncommon to see participants engaged in informal discussion far into the evenings and early mornings, long after formal sessions had ended. It is my hope that this book captures the substance and excitement of many of the ideas that were presented at the workshop. Indeed, the process by which this book has come about has given every opportunity for the best thinking to get reflected here. Participants wrote papers prior to the workshop. After the workshop, participants revised the papers at least once. In a few instances, three versions of papers were written. Some participants could not resist the urge to incorporate descriptions of some of the newer developments in their projects. The papers in this book demonstrate how technology is impacting our view of what should be taught, what can be taught, and how we should go about teaching in the various disciplines. As such, they offer great insight into the central issues of teaching and learning in a wide range of disciplines and across many grade levels (ranging from elementary school through undergraduate college education).

Design of intelligent robots is one of the most important endeavors in robotics research today. The key to intelligent robot design lies in sensory systems for robotic control and manipulation. In an unstructural environment, robotic sensing translates measurements and characteristics of the environment and working objects into useful information. A robotic system is usually equipped with a variety of sensors to perform redundant sensing and achieve data fusion. This book contains revised versions of papers presented at a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in Florida in September 1989 within the activities of the NATO Special Programme on Sensory Systems for Robotic Control. The fundamental issues addressed in this volume were: - Theory and techniques, including knowledge-based systems, geometrical fusion, Boolean fusion, probabilistic fusion, feature-based fusion, error-estimation approach, and Markov process modeling. - General concepts, including microscopic redundancy at the sensory element level, macroscopic redundancy at the sensory system level, parallel redundancy, and standby redundancy. - Implementation and application, including robotic control, sensory technology, robotic assembly, robot fingers, sensory signal processing, sensory system integration, and PAPIA architecture. - Biological analogies, including neural nets, pattern recognition, low-level fusion, and motor learning.

The two volume set LNAI 7101 and 7102 constitute the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, ICIRA 2011, held in Aachen, Germany, in November 2011. The 122 revised full papers presented were thoroughly reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. They are organized in topical sections on progress in indoor UAV, robotics intelligence, industrial robots, rehabilitation robotics, mechanisms and their applications, multi robot systems, robot mechanism and design, parallel kinematics, parallel kinematics machines and parallel robotics, handling and manipulation, tangibility in human-machine interaction, navigation and localization of mobile robot, a body for the brain: embodied intelligence in bio-inspired robotics, intelligent visual systems, self-optimising production systems, computational intelligence, robot control systems, human-robot interaction, manipulators and applications, stability, dynamics and interpolation, evolutionary robotics, bio-inspired robotics, and image-processing applications.

The successful implementation of applications in spatial reasoning requires paying attention to the representation of spatial data. In particular, an integrated and uniform treatment of different spatial features is necessary in order to enable the reasoning to proceed quickly. Currently, the most prevalent features are points, rectangles, lines, regions, surfaces, and volumes. As an example of a reasoning task consider a query of the form "find all cities with population in excess of 5,000 in wheat growing regions within 10 miles of the Mississippi River. " Note that this query is quite complex. It requires- processing a line map (for the river), creating a corridor or buffer (to find the area within 10 miles of the river), a region map (for the wheat), and a point map (for the cities). Spatial reasoning is eased by spatially sorting the data (i. e. , a spatial index). In this paper we show how hierarchical data structures can be used to facilitate this process. They are based on the principle of recursive decomposition (similar to divide and conquer methods). In essence, they are used primarily as devices to sort data of more than one dimension and different spatial types. The term quadtree is often used to describe this class of data structures. In this paper, we focus on recent developments in the use of quadtree methods. We concentrate primarily on region data. For a more extensive treatment of this subject, see [SameS4a, SameSSa, SameSSb, SameSSc, SameSga, SameSgbj.

Supercomputing is an important science and technology that enables the scientist or the engineer to simulate numerically very complex physical phenomena related to large-scale scientific, industrial and military applications. It has made considerable progress since the first NATO Workshop on High-Speed Computation in 1983 (Vol. 7 of the same series). This book is a collection of papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in Trondheim, Norway, in June 1989. It presents key research issues related to: - hardware systems, architecture and performance; - compilers and programming tools; - user environments and visualization; - algorithms and applications. Contributions include critical evaluations of the state-of-the-art and many original research results.