Claude Latombe, Ming C. Lin., David Hsu, Volkan Isler J. Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics IX

Naples: Bruno Siciliano, 2010. — 428 p.By the dawn of the new millennium, robotics has undergone a major transformation in scope and dimensions. This expansion has been brought about by the maturity of the field and the advances in its related technologies. From a largely dominant industrial focus, robotics has been rapidly expanding into the challenges of the human world (human-centered and life-like robotics). The new generation of robots is expected to safely and dependably interact and work with humans in homes, workplaces, and communities providing support in services, entertainment, education, exploration, healthcare, manufacturing, and assistance. Beyond its impact on physical robots, the body of knowledge that robotics has produced is revealing a much wider range of applications reaching across diverse research areas and scientific disciplines, such as: biomechanics, haptics, neurosciences, and virtual simulation, animation, surgery, and sensor networks among others. In return, the challenges of the new emerging areas are proving an abundant source of stimulation and insights for the field of robotics. It is indeed at the intersection of disciplines where the most striking advances happen. The Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR) is devoted to bringing to the research community the latest advances in the robotics field on the basis of their significance and quality. Through a wide and timely dissemination of critical research developments in robotics, our objective with this series is to promote more exchanges and collaborations among the researchers in the community and contribute to further advancements in this rapidly growing field. Since its inception in 1994, the biennial Workshop Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR) has established some of the field's most fundamental and lasting contributions. Since the launching of STAR, WAFR and several other thematic symposia in robotics find an important platform for closer links and extended reach within the robotics community. This volume is the outcome of the WAFR ninth edition and is edited by D. Hsu, V. Isler, J.-C. Latombe and M.C. Lin. The book offers a collection of a wide range of topics in advanced robotics, including motion planning, multiagents, modular and reconfigurable robots, localization and mapping, grasping, and sensing. The contents of the twenty-four contributions represent a cross-section of the current state of research from one particular aspect: algorithms, and how they are inspired by classical disciplines, such as discrete and computational geometry, differential geometry, mechanics, optimization, operations research, computer science, probability and statistics, and information theory. Validation of algorithms, design concepts, or techniques is the common thread running through this focused collection.