Insects are extremely successful creatures, thriving in our ever-changing & unpredictable world. One of the factors behind their success is the use of odour to increase their efficiency when searching for food, to help navigate between a source of food & their nest & to enable them to find a mate. Mobile robots would have their capabilities greatly enhanced if they could make use of similar techniques. This important book describes current research aimed at giving robots the ability to generate, detect & discriminate between odours, together with the control algorithms using such sensory information. Contents: Chemical Sensing in Nature; Odour-Sensing Technology; Odour Discrimination; Airflow; Broadcast Chemical Signals; Chemical Markings as Signals; Trail Following; Coding Information into Trails; Heat as a Short-Lived Marker. Readership: Graduate students & researchers in robotics, mechatronics & artificial intelligence.

This book provides state-of-the-art scientific and engineering research findings and developments in the area of mobile robotics and associated support technologies. The book contains peer reviewed articles presented at the CLAWAR 2012 conference. Robots are no longer confined to industrial and manufacturing environments. A great deal of interest is invested in the use of robots outside the factory environment. The CLAWAR conference series, established as a high profile international event, acts as a platform for dissemination of research and development findings and supports such a trend to address the current interest in mobile robotics to meet the needs of mankind in various sectors of the society. These include personal care, public health, services in the domestic, public and industrial environments. The editors of the book have extensive research experience and publications in the area of robotics in general and in mobile robotics specifically, and their experience is reflected in editing the contents of the book.

This book provides state-of-the-art scientific and engineering research findings and developments in the area of mobile robotics and associated support technologies. The book contains peer reviewed articles presented at the CLAWAR 2012 conference. Robots are no longer confined to industrial manufacturing environments. A great deal of interest is invested in the use of robots outside the factory environment. The CLAWAR conference series, established as a high profile international event, acts as a platform for dissemination of research and development findings and supports such a trend to address the current interest in mobile robotics to meet the needs of mankind in various sectors of the society. These include personal care, public health, services in the domestic, public and industrial environments. The editors of the book have extensive research experience and publications in the area of robotics in general and in mobile robotics specifically, and their experience is reflected in editing the contents of the book.

The design and study of materials is a pivotal component to new discoveries in the various fields of science and technology. By better understanding the components and structures of materials, researchers can increase its applications across different industries. Electronic Nose Technologies and Advances in Machine Olfaction is an academic scholarly resource that examines the emerging applications of odor-sensing devices as well as a better understanding of the designing process with the aid of neural networks and various other technologies. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics including food spoilage detection, chemical sensing, and olfactometer, this book is a vital resource for engineers, academicians, researchers, students, and practitioners seeking current research on the advancements in applications of odor-sensing devices.

This book describes recent work on active sensors for mobile robots. An active sensor interacts with its surroundings to supply data on demand for a particular function, gathering and abstracting information according to need rather than acting as a generic data gatherer. Details of the physical operation are hidden. The book deals mainly with active range sensors, which provide rapid information for local planning, describing extraction of two-dimensional features such as lines, corners and cylinders to reconstruct a plan of a building. It is structured according to the physical principles of the sensors, since to a large extent these determine the function of the sensors and the methods of processing. Recent work using sonar, optoelectronic sensors and radar is described. Sections on vision and on sensor management develop the idea of software adaptation for efficient operation in a changing environment. Contents: The Mapping and Localisation Problem; Perception at Millimetre Wavelengths; Advanced Sonar: Principles of Operation and Interpretation; Smooth and Rough Target Modelling: Examples in Mapping and Texture Classification; Sonar Systems: A Biological Perspective; Map Building from Range Data Using Mathematical Morphology; Millimetre Wave Radar for Robotics; Optoelectronic Range Sensors; AMCW LIDAR Range Acquisition; Extracting Lines and Curves from Optoelectronic Range Data; Active Vision for Mobile Robot Navigation; Strategies for Active Sensor Management. Readership: Graduate students and final year undergraduate students in electrical and electronic engineering, systems and knowledge, robotics, image processing and artificial intelligence.

Autonomous Mobile Robots: Planning, Navigation, and Simulation presents detailed coverage of the domain of robotics in motion planning and associated topics in navigation. This book covers numerous base planning methods from diverse schools of learning, including deliberative planning methods, reactive planning methods, task planning methods, fusion of different methods, and cognitive architectures. It is a good resource for doing initial project work in robotics, providing an overview, methods and simulation software in one resource. For more advanced readers, it presents a variety of planning algorithms to choose from, presenting the tradeoffs between the algorithms to ascertain a good choice. Finally, the book presents fusion mechanisms to design hybrid algorithms. - Presents intuitive and practical coverage of all sub-problems of mobile robotics to enable easy comprehension of sophisticated modern-day robots - Covers a wide variety of motion planning algorithms, giving a near-exhaustive treatment of the domain with thought provoking comparisons between algorithms - Dives into detailed discussions on robot operating systems and other simulators to get hands-on knowledge without the need of in-house robots

The International Symposia on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS) started at Riken, Japan in 1992. Since then, the DARS symposia have been held every two years: in 1994 and 1996 in Japan (Riken, Wako), in 1998 in Germany (Karlsruhe), in 2000 in the USA (Knoxville, TN), in 2002 in Japan (Fukuoka), in 2004 in France (Toulouse), and in 2006 in the USA (Minneapolis, MN). The 9th DARS symposium, which was held during November 17–19 in T- kuba, Japan, hosted 84 participants from 13 countries. The 48 papers presented there were selected through rigorous peer review with a 50% acceptance ratio. Along with three invited talks, they addressed the spreading research fields of DARS, which are classifiable along two streams: theoretical and standard studies of DARS, and interdisciplinary studies using DARS concepts. The former stream includes multi-robot cooperation (task assignment methodology among multiple robots, multi-robot localization, etc.), swarm intelligence, and modular robots. The latter includes distributed sensing, mobiligence, ambient intelligence, and mul- agent systems interaction with human beings. This book not only offers readers the latest research results related to DARS from theoretical studies to application-oriented ones; it also describes the present trends of this field. With the diversity and depth revealed herein, we expect that DARS technologies will flourish soon.