This book presents the outcomes of the 12th International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR 2016). WAFR is a prestigious, single-track, biennial international meeting devoted to recent advances in algorithmic problems in robotics. Robot algorithms are an important building block of robotic systems and are used to process inputs from users and sensors, perceive and build models of the environment, plan low-level motions and high-level tasks, control robotic actuators, and coordinate actions across multiple systems. However, developing and analyzing these algorithms raises complex challenges, both theoretical and practical. Advances in the algorithmic foundations of robotics have applications to manufacturing, medicine, distributed robotics, human–robot interaction, intelligent prosthetics, computer animation, computational biology, and many other areas. The 2016 edition of WAFR went back to its roots and was held in San Francisco, California – the city where the very first WAFR was held in 1994. Organized by Pieter Abbeel, Kostas Bekris, Ken Goldberg, and Lauren Miller, WAFR 2016 featured keynote talks by John Canny on “A Guided Tour of Computer Vision, Robotics, Algebra, and HCI,” Erik Demaine on “Replicators, Transformers, and Robot Swarms: Science Fiction through Geometric Algorithms,” Dan Halperin on “From Piano Movers to Piano Printers: Computing and Using Minkowski Sums,” and by Lydia Kavraki on “20 Years of Sampling Robot Motion.” Furthermore, it included an Open Problems Session organized by Ron Alterovitz, Florian Pokorny, and Jur van den Berg. There were 58 paper presentations during the three-day event. The organizers would like to thank the authors for their work and contributions, the reviewers for ensuring the high quality of the meeting, the WAFR Steering Committee led by Nancy Amato as well as WAFR’s fiscal sponsor, the International Federation of Robotics Research (IFRR), led by Oussama Khatib and Henrik Christensen. WAFR 2016 was an enjoyable and memorable event.

This book includes significant recent research on robotic algorithms. It has been written by leading experts in the field. The 15th Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR) was held on June 22–24, 2022, at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. Each chapter represents an exciting state-of-the-art development in robotic algorithms that was presented at this 15th incarnation of WAFR. Different chapters combine ideas from a wide variety of fields, spanning and combining planning (for tasks, paths, motion, navigation, coverage, and patrol), computational geometry and topology, control theory, machine learning, formal methods, game theory, information theory, and theoretical computer science. Many of these papers explore new and interesting problems and problem variants that include human–robot interaction, planning and reasoning under uncertainty, dynamic environments, distributed decision making, multi-agent coordination, and heterogeneity.

Algorithms, the heart of robotics, form the connection between data collected by sensors and the robotís activities. They also serve as a medium to describe the foundations and principles of robotics.Paper Topics Include: Motion Planning * Navigation * Manipulation * Grasping * Assembly * Controllability * Recognizability * Learning and Distributed Control * Task-Specific Manipulator Design * Simulation of Linkages and Collisions * Completeness and Complexity Measures * Computational Algebra and Geometry

An introduction to the techniques and algorithms of the newest field in robotics. Probabilistic robotics is a new and growing area in robotics, concerned with perception and control in the face of uncertainty. Building on the field of mathematical statistics, probabilistic robotics endows robots with a new level of robustness in real-world situations. This book introduces the reader to a wealth of techniques and algorithms in the field. All algorithms are based on a single overarching mathematical foundation. Each chapter provides example implementations in pseudo code, detailed mathematical derivations, discussions from a practitioner's perspective, and extensive lists of exercises and class projects. The book's Web site, www.probabilistic-robotics.org, has additional material. The book is relevant for anyone involved in robotic software development and scientific research. It will also be of interest to applied statisticians and engineers dealing with real-world sensor data.

A modern and unified treatment of the mechanics, planning, and control of robots, suitable for a first course in robotics.

Planning algorithms are impacting technical disciplines and industries around the world, including robotics, computer-aided design, manufacturing, computer graphics, aerospace applications, drug design, and protein folding. Written for computer scientists and engineers with interests in artificial intelligence, robotics, or control theory, this is the only book on this topic that tightly integrates a vast body of literature from several fields into a coherent source for teaching and reference in a wide variety of applications. Difficult mathematical material is explained through hundreds of examples and illustrations.

Foundations of Robotics presents the fundamental concepts and methodologies for the analysis, design, and control of robot manipulators.