This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, ICIRA 2020, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in November 2020. The 45 full papers and 3 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 66 submissions. The accepted papers were grouped into various subtopics including Advanced Measurement and Machine Vision System; Automation; Human-Robot Interaction; Mobile Robots and Intelligent Autonomous System; Recent Trends in Computational Intelligence; Robot Design, and Development and Control. Due to the Corona pandemic ICIRA 2020 was held as a virtual event.

Since the late 1960s, there has been a revolution in robots and industrial automation, from the design of robots with no computing or sensorycapabilities (first-generation), to the design of robots with limited computational power and feedback capabilities (second-generation), and the design of intelligent robots (third-generation), which possess diverse sensing and decision making capabilities. The development of the theory of intelligent machines has been developed in parallel to the advances in robot design. This theory is the natural outcome of research and development in classical control (1950s), adaptive and learning control (1960s), self-organizing control (1970s) and intelligent control systems (1980s). The theory of intelligent machines involves utilization and integration of concepts and ideas from the diverse disciplines of science, engineering and mathematics, and fields like artificial intelligence, system theory and operations research. The main focus and motivation is to bridge the gap between diverse disciplines involved and bring under a common cover several generic methodologies pertaining to what has been defined as machine intelligence. Intelligent robotic systems are a specific application of intelligent machines. They are complex computer controlled robotic systems equipped with a diverse set of visual and non visual sensors and possess decision making and problem solving capabilities within their domain of operation. Their modeling and control is accomplished via analytical and heuristic methodologies and techniques pertaining to generalized system theory and artificial intelligence. Intelligent Robotic Systems: Theory, Design and Applications, presents and justifies the fundamental concepts and ideas associated with the modeling and analysis of intelligent robotic systems. Appropriate for researchers and engineers in the general area of robotics and automation, Intelligent Robotic Systems is both a solid reference as well as a text for a graduate level course in intelligent robotics/machines.

The market demand for skills, knowledge and adaptability have positioned robotics to be an important field in both engineering and science. One of the most highly visible applications of robotics has been the robotic automation of many industrial tasks in factories. In the future, a new era will come in which we will see a greater success for robotics in non-industrial environments. In order to anticipate a wider deployment of intelligent and autonomous robots for tasks such as manufacturing, healthcare, ent- tainment, search and rescue, surveillance, exploration, and security missions, it is essential to push the frontier of robotics into a new dimension, one in which motion and intelligence play equally important roles. The 2010 International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications (ICIRA 2010) was held in Shanghai, China, November 10–12, 2010. The theme of the c- ference was “Robotics Harmonizing Life,” a theme that reflects the ever-growing interest in research, development and applications in the dynamic and exciting areas of intelligent robotics. These volumes of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Artificial Intel- gence and Lecture Notes in Computer Science contain 140 high-quality papers, which were selected at least for the papers in general sessions, with a 62% acceptance rate Traditionally, ICIRA 2010 holds a series of plenary talks, and we were fortunate to have two such keynote speakers who shared their expertise with us in diverse topic areas spanning the rang of intelligent robotics and application activities.

The market demands for skills, knowledge and personalities have positioned robotics as an important field in both engineering and science. To meet these challenging - mands, robotics has already seen its success in automating many industrial tasks in factories. And, a new era will come for us to see a greater success of robotics in n- industrial environments. In anticipating a wider deployment of intelligent and auto- mous robots for tasks such as manufacturing, eldercare, homecare, edutainment, search and rescue, de-mining, surveillance, exploration, and security missions, it is necessary for us to push the frontier of robotics into a new dimension, in which motion and intelligence play equally important roles. After the success of the inaugural conference, the purpose of the Second Inter- tional Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications was to provide a venue where researchers, scientists, engineers and practitioners throughout the world could come together to present and discuss the latest achievement, future challenges and exciting applications of intelligent and autonomous robots. In particular, the emphasis of this year’s conference was on “robot intelligence for achieving digital manufact- ing and intelligent automations. ” This volume of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Computer Science contains accepted papers presented at ICIRA 2009, held in Singapore, December 16–18, 2009. On the basis of the reviews and recommendations by the international Program Committee members, we decided to accept 128 papers having technical novelty, out of 173 submissions received from different parts of the world.

This two volume set LNAI 9834 and 9835 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, ICIRA 2016, held in Tokyo, Japan, in August 2016. The 114 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 148 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections such as Robot Control; Robot Mechanism, Robot Vision and Sensing; Planning, Localization, and Mapping; Interactive Intelligence; Cognitive Robotics; Bio-Inspired Robotics; Smart Material Based Systems; Mechatronics Systems for Nondestructive Testing; Social Robotics; Human Support Robotics; Assistive Robotics; Intelligent Space; Sensing and Monitoring in Environment and Agricultural Sciences; Human Data Analysis; Robot Hand.

This two volumes set LNAI 8102 and LNAI 8103 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, ICIRA 2013, held in Busan, South Korea, in September 2013. The 147 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 184 submissions. The papers discuss various topics from intelligent robotics, automation and mechatronics with particular emphasis on technical challenges associated with varied applications such as biomedical application, industrial automation, surveillance and sustainable mobility.

With the increasing applications of intelligent robotic systems in various ?elds, the - sign and control of these systems have increasingly attracted interest from researchers. This edited book entitled “Design and Control of Intelligent Robotic Systems” in the book series of “Studies in Computational Intelligence” is a collection of some advanced research on design and control of intelligent robots. The works presented range in scope from design methodologies to robot development. Various design approaches and al- rithms, such as evolutionary computation, neural networks, fuzzy logic, learning, etc. are included. We also would like to mention that most studies reported in this book have been implemented in physical systems. An overview on the applications of computational intelligence in bio-inspired robotics is given in Chapter 1 by M. Begum and F. Karray, with highlights of the recent progress in bio-inspired robotics research and a focus on the usage of computational intelligence tools to design human-like cognitive abilities in the robotic systems. In Chapter 2, Lisa L. Grant and Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy present greedy search, particle swarm optimization and fuzzy logic based strategies for navigating a swarm of robots for target search in a hazardous environment, with potential applications in high-risk tasks such as disaster recovery and hazardous material detection.