An advanced undergraduate/graduate text, emphasizing computation and algorithms for locomotion, sensing, and reasoning in mobile robots.

Through expanded intelligence, the use of robotics has fundamentally transformed a variety of fields, including manufacturing, aerospace, medicine, social services, and agriculture. Continued research on robotic design is critical to solving various dynamic obstacles individuals, enterprises, and humanity at large face on a daily basis. Robotic Systems: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source that delves into the current issues, methodologies, and trends relating to advanced robotic technology in the modern world. Highlighting a range of topics such as mechatronics, cybernetics, and human-computer interaction, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for robotics engineers, mechanical engineers, robotics technicians, operators, software engineers, designers, programmers, industry professionals, researchers, students, academicians, and computer practitioners seeking current research on developing innovative ideas for intelligent and autonomous robotics systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Social Robotics, ICSR 2015, held in Paris, France, in October 2015. The 70 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 126 submissions. The papers focus on the interaction between humans and robots and the integration of robots into our society and present innovative ideas and concepts, new discoveries and improvements, novel applications on the latest fundamental advances in the core technologies that form the backbone of social robotics, distinguished developmental projects, as well as seminal works in aesthetic design, ethics and philosophy, studies on social impact and influence pertaining to social robotics, and its interaction and communication with human beings and its social impact on our society.

This book presents the development of a new multimodal human-robot interface for testing and validating control strategies applied to robotic walkers for assisting human mobility and gait rehabilitation. The aim is to achieve a closer interaction between the robotic device and the individual, empowering the rehabilitation potential of such devices in clinical applications. A new multimodal human-robot interface for testing and validating control strategies applied to robotic walkers for assisting human mobility and gait rehabilitation is presented. Trends and opportunities for future advances in the field of assistive locomotion via the development of hybrid solutions based on the combination of smart walkers and biomechatronic exoskeletons are also discussed.

Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) personnel are some of the most highly trained people in the military, with a job description that spans defusing unexploded ordnance to protecting VIP’s and state dignitaries. EOD are also one of the first military groups to work with robots every day. These robots have become an increasingly important tool in EOD work, enabling people to work at safer distances in many dangerous situations. Based on exploratory research investigating interactions between EOD personnel and the robots they use, this study richly describes the nuances of these reciprocal influences, especially those related to operator emotion associated with the robots. In particular, this book examines the activities, processes and contexts that influence or constrain everyday EOD human-robot interactions, what human factors are shaping the (robotic) technology and how people and culture are being changed by using it. The findings from this research have implications for future personnel training, and the refinement of robot design considerations for many fields that rely on critical small group communication and decision-making skills.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Social Robotics, ICSR 2012, held in Chengdu, China, in October 2012. The 66 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on affective and cognitive sciences for socially interactive robots, situated interaction and embodiment, robots to assist the elderly and persons with disabilities, social acceptance of robots and their impact to the society, artificial empathy, HRI through non-verbal communication and control, social telepresence robots, embodiments and networks, interaction and collaboration among robots, humans and environment, human augmentation, rehabilitation, and medical robots I and II.

This book is the fifth official archival publication devoted to RoboCup. It documents the achievements presented at the 5th Robot World Cup Soccer Games and Conferences held in Seattle, Washington, USA, in August 2001.The book contains the following parts: introduction, champion teams, challenge award finalists, technical papers, poster presentations, and team descriptions (arranged according to various leagues).This book is mandatory reading for the rapidly growing RoboCup community as well as a valuable source of references and inspiration for R&D professionals interested in multi-agent systems, distributed artificial intelligence, and intelligent robotics.