th This volume is an edition of the papers selected from the 13 International Conference on Advanced Robotics, ICAR 2007, held in Jeju, Korea, August 22-25, 2007, with the theme: “Viable Robotics Service to Human. ” It is intended to deliver readers the most recent technical progress in robotics, in particular, toward the advancement of robotic service to human. To ensure its quality, this volume took only 28 papers out of the 214 papers accepted for publication for ICAR 2007. The selection was based mainly on the technical merit, but also took into consideration whether the subject represents a theme of current interest. For the final inclusion, authors of the selected papers were requested for another round of revision and expansion. In this volume, we organize the 28 contributions into three chapters. Chapter 1 covers Novel Mechanisms, Chapter 2 deals with perception guided navigation and manipulation, and Chapter 3 addresses human-robot interaction and intelligence. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 consist of 7, 13 and 8 contributions, respectively. For the sake of clarity, Chapter 2 is divided further into two parts with Part 1 for Perception Guided Navigation and Part 2 for Perception Guided Manipulation. Chapter 3 is also divided into two parts with Part 1 for Human- Robot Interaction and Part 2 for Intelligence. For the convenience of readers, a ch- ter summary is introduced as an overview in the beginning of each chapter. The chapter summaries were prepared by Dr. Munsang Kim for Chapter 1, Prof.

This volume is composed of invited papers on learning and control. The contents form the proceedings of a workshop held in January 2008, in Hyderabad that honored the 60th birthday of Doctor Mathukumalli Vidyasagar. The 14 papers, written by international specialists in the field, cover a variety of interests within the broader field of learning and control. The diversity of the research provides a comprehensive overview of a field of great interest to control and system theorists.

This book moves from a thorough investigation of human capabilities during movements and interactions with objects and environment and translates those principles into the design planning and control of innovative mechatronic systems, providing significant advancements in the fields of human–robot interaction, autonomous robots, prosthetics and assistive devices. The work presented in this monograph is characterized by a significant paradigmatic shift with respect to typical approaches, as it always place the human at the center of the technology developed, and the human represents the starting point and the actual beneficiary of the developed solutions. The content of this book is targeted to robotics and neuroscience enthusiasts, researchers and makers, students and simple lovers of the matter.

This book investigates a biologically inspired method of robot arm control, developed with the objective of synthesising human-like motion dynamically, using nonlinear, robust and adaptive control techniques in practical robot systems. The control method caters to a rising interest in humanoid robots and the need for appropriate control schemes to match these systems. Unlike the classic kinematic schemes used in industrial manipulators, the dynamic approaches proposed here promote human-like motion with better exploitation of the robot’s physical structure. This also benefits human-robot interaction. The control schemes proposed in this book are inspired by a wealth of human-motion literature that indicates the drivers of motion to be dynamic, model-based and optimal. Such considerations lend themselves nicely to achievement via nonlinear control techniques without the necessity for extensive and complex biological models. The operational-space method of robot control forms the basis of many of the techniques investigated in this book. The method includes attractive features such as the decoupling of motion into task and posture components. Various developments are made in each of these elements. Simple cost functions inspired by biomechanical “effort” and “discomfort” generate realistic posture motion. Sliding-mode techniques overcome robustness shortcomings for practical implementation. Arm compliance is achieved via a method of model-free adaptive control that also deals with actuator saturation via anti-windup compensation. A neural-network-centered learning-by-observation scheme generates new task motions, based on motion-capture data recorded from human volunteers. In other parts of the book, motion capture is used to test theories of human movement. All developed controllers are applied to the reaching motion of a humanoid robot arm and are demonstrated to be practically realisable. This book is designed to be of interest to those wishing to achieve dynamics-based human-like robot-arm motion in academic research, advanced study or certain industrial environments. The book provides motivations, extensive reviews, research results and detailed explanations. It is not only suited to practising control engineers, but also applicable for general roboticists who wish to develop control systems expertise in this area.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Robotics, ICSR 2016, held in Kansas City, MO, USA, in November 2016. The 98 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 107 submissions. The theme of the 2016 conference is Sociorobotics: Design and implementation of social behaviors of robots interacting with each other and humans. In addition to technical sessions, ICSR 2016 included three workshops: The Synthetic Method in Social Robotics (SMSR 2016), Social Robots: A Tool to Advance Interventions for Autism, and Using Social Robots to Improve the Quality of Life in the Elderly.

Robot Motion Control 2009 presents very recent results in robot motion and control. Forty short papers have been chosen from those presented at the sixth International Workshop on Robot Motion and Control held in Poland in June 2009. The authors of these papers have been carefully selected and represent leading institutions in this field. The following recent developments are discussed: design of trajectory planning schemes for holonomic and nonholonomic systems with optimization of energy, torque limitations and other factors, new control algorithms for industrial robots, nonholonomic systems and legged robots, different applications of robotic systems in industry and everyday life, like medicine, education, entertainment and others, multiagent systems consisting of mobile and flying robots with their applications. The book is suitable for graduate students of automation and robotics, informatics and management, mechatronics, electronics and production engineering systems as well as scientists and researchers working in these fields.

Computer programs and processes that take into account the goals and needs of the user meet with the greatest success, so it behooves software engineers to consider the human element inherent in every line of code they write. Human Factors in Software Development and Design brings together high quality research on the influence and impact of ordinary people on the software industry. With the goal of improving the quality and usability of computer technologies, this premier reference is intended for students and practitioners of software engineering as well as researchers, educators, and interested laymen.