Robotic systems have proved themselves to be of increasing importance and are widely adopted to substitute for humans in repetitive or hazardous situations. Their diffusion has outgrown the limits of industrial applications in manufacturing systems to co ver all aspects of exploration and servicing in hostile environments such as undersea, outer space, battlefields and nuclear plants. Complex robotic systems - ie robotic systems with a complex structure and architecture - are gaining increasing attention from both the academic community and industrial users. The modelling and control problems for these systems cannot be regarded as simple extensions of those for traditional single manipulators, since additional complexity arises; to accomplish tasks there is the need to ensure co-ordinated motion of the whole system together with management of interaction between each component of the system. This book focuses on two examples of complex robotic systems - namely co-operating manipulators and multi-fingered hands. It is addressed to graduate students as well as to researchers in the field.

Robotic systems have proved themselves to be of increasing importance and are widely adopted to substitute for humans in repetitive or hazardous situations. Their diffusion has outgrown the limits of industrial applications in manufacturing systems to co ver all aspects of exploration and servicing in hostile environments such as undersea, outer space, battlefields and nuclear plants. Complex robotic systems - ie robotic systems with a complex structure and architecture - are gaining increasing attention from both the academic community and industrial users. The modelling and control problems for these systems cannot be regarded as simple extensions of those for traditional single manipulators, since additional complexity arises; to accomplish tasks there is the need to ensure co-ordinated motion of the whole system together with management of interaction between each component of the system. This book focuses on two examples of complex robotic systems - namely co-operating manipulators and multi-fingered hands. It is addressed to graduate students as well as to researchers in the field.

This book addresses dynamic modelling methodology and analyses of tree-type robotic systems. Such analyses are required to visualize the motion of a system without really building it. The book contains novel treatment of the tree-type systems using concept of kinematic modules and the corresponding Decoupled Natural Orthogonal Complements (DeNOC), unified representation of the multiple-degrees-of freedom-joints, efficient recursive dynamics algorithms, and detailed dynamic analyses of several legged robots. The book will help graduate students, researchers and practicing engineers in applying their knowledge of dynamics for analysis of complex robotic systems. The knowledge contained in the book will help one in virtual testing of robot operation, trajectory planning and control.

Here is a comprehensive presentation of methodology for the design and synthesis of an intelligent complex robotic system, connecting formal tools from discrete system theory, artificial intelligence, neural network, and fuzzy logic. The necessary methods for solving real time action planning, coordination and control problems are described. A notable chapter presents a new approach to intelligent robotic agent control acting in a realworld environment based on a lifelong learning approach combining cognitive and reactive capabilities. Another key feature is the homogeneous description of all solutions and methods based on system theory formalism.

The 6th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS 2002) was held in June 2002 in Fukuoka, Japan, a decade after the first DARS symposium was convened. This book, containing the proceedings of the symposium, provides broad coverage of the technical issues in the current state of the art in distributed autonomous systems composed of multiple robots, robotic modules, or robotic agents. DARS 2002 dealt with new strategies for realizing complex, modular, robust, and fault-tolerant robotic systems, and this volume covers the technical areas of system design, modeling, simulation, operation, sensing, planning, and control. The papers that are included here were contributed by leading researchers from Asia, Oceania, Europe, and the Americas, and make up an invaluable resource for researchers and students in the field of distributed autonomous robotic systems.