Selected contributions to the Workshop WAFR 2002, held December 15-17, 2002, Nice, France. This fifth biannual Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics focuses on algorithmic issues related to robotics and automation. The design and analysis of robot algorithms raises fundamental questions in computer science, computational geometry, mechanical modeling, operations research, control theory, and associated fields. The highly selective program highlights significant new results such as algorithmic models and complexity bounds. The validation of algorithms, design concepts, or techniques is the common thread running through this focused collection.

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.

Computer Science Workbench is a monograph series which will provide you with an in-depth working knowledge of current developments in computer technology. Every volume in this series will deal with a topic of importance in computer science and elaborate on how you yourself can build systems related to the main theme. You will be able to develop a variety of systems, including computer software tools, computer graphics, computer animation, database management systems, and computer-aided design and manufacturing systems. Computer Science Workbench represents an important new contribution in the field of practical computer technology. TOSIYASU L. KUNII To my parents Kenjiro and Nori Fujimura Preface Motion planning is an area in robotics that has received much attention recently. Much of the past research focuses on static environments - various methods have been developed and their characteristics have been well investigated. Although it is essential for autonomous intelligent robots to be able to navigate within dynamic worlds, the problem of motion planning in dynamic domains is relatively little understood compared with static problems.

Methods by which robots can learn control laws that enable real-time reactivity using dynamical systems; with applications and exercises. This book presents a wealth of machine learning techniques to make the control of robots more flexible and safe when interacting with humans. It introduces a set of control laws that enable reactivity using dynamical systems, a widely used method for solving motion-planning problems in robotics. These control approaches can replan in milliseconds to adapt to new environmental constraints and offer safe and compliant control of forces in contact. The techniques offer theoretical advantages, including convergence to a goal, non-penetration of obstacles, and passivity. The coverage of learning begins with low-level control parameters and progresses to higher-level competencies composed of combinations of skills. Learning for Adaptive and Reactive Robot Control is designed for graduate-level courses in robotics, with chapters that proceed from fundamentals to more advanced content. Techniques covered include learning from demonstration, optimization, and reinforcement learning, and using dynamical systems in learning control laws, trajectory planning, and methods for compliant and force control . Features for teaching in each chapter: applications, which range from arm manipulators to whole-body control of humanoid robots; pencil-and-paper and programming exercises; lecture videos, slides, and MATLAB code examples available on the author’s website . an eTextbook platform website offering protected material[EPS2] for instructors including solutions.

This book aims at gathering roboticists, control theorists, neuroscientists, and mathematicians, in order to promote a multidisciplinary research on movement analysis. It follows the workshop “ Geometric and Numerical Foundations of Movements ” held at LAAS-CNRS in Toulouse in November 2015[1]. Its objective is to lay the foundations for a mutual understanding that is essential for synergetic development in motion research. In particular, the book promotes applications to robotics --and control in general-- of new optimization techniques based on recent results from real algebraic geometry.

One of the ultimate goals in Robotics is to create autonomous robots. Such robots will accept high-level descriptions of tasks and will execute them without further human intervention. The input descriptions will specify what the user wants done rather than how to do it. The robots will be any kind of versatile mechanical device equipped with actuators and sensors under the control of a computing system. Making progress toward autonomous robots is of major practical inter est in a wide variety of application domains including manufacturing, construction, waste management, space exploration, undersea work, as sistance for the disabled, and medical surgery. It is also of great technical interest, especially for Computer Science, because it raises challenging and rich computational issues from which new concepts of broad useful ness are likely to emerge. Developing the technologies necessary for autonomous robots is a formidable undertaking with deep interweaved ramifications in auto mated reasoning, perception and control. It raises many important prob lems. One of them - motion planning - is the central theme of this book. It can be loosely stated as follows: How can a robot decide what motions to perform in order to achieve goal arrangements of physical objects? This capability is eminently necessary since, by definition, a robot accomplishes tasks by moving in the real world. The minimum one would expect from an autonomous robot is the ability to plan its x Preface own motions.