This book demonstrates bene?ts of abstract and qualitative reasoning that have not received much attention in the context of autonomous robotics before. Bremen, Christian Freksa December 2007 Director of the SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition Preface This book addresses spatial representations and reasoning techniques for - bile robot mapping, providing an analysis of fundamental representations and processes involved. A spatial representation based on shape information is p- posed and shape analysis techniques are developed to tackle the correspondence problem in robot mapping. A general mathematical formulation is presented to provide the formal ground for an e?cient matching of con?gurations of objects. This book is a slightly revised version of my doctoral thesis submitted to the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Bremen, Germany. Manycontributeto the developmentofa dissertation,butsomeofthemstand out. Christian Freksa, I thank you for supporting and encouraging my work, for introducing me to interdisciplinary work, for giving me the freedom to develop this dissertation, and for providing an enjoyable atmosphere to work in. Longin Jan Latecki, thank you for countless in-depth discussions helping me to develop andtopositionmywork,forthefruitfulcollaboration,andformakingaresearch stay possible that has been very valuable to me. I thank the research groups in Bremen and Philadelphia for helpful discussions and feedback, in particular Jan Oliver Wallgrun. ̈ I also thank Kai-Florian Richter, Sven Bertel, and Lutz Frommberger for feedback on this work. Robert Ross, thank you for helping to proof-read this dissertation.

Space and time are inextricably linked. Reasoning about space often involves reasoning about change in spatial configurations. Qualitative spatial information theory encompasses spatial as well as temporal representation and reasoning. Qualitative Spatio-Temporal Representation and Reasoning: Trends and Future Directions is a contribution to the emerging discipline of qualitative spatial information theory within artificial intelligence. This collection of research covers both theory and application-centric research and provides a comprehensive perspective on the emerging area of qualitative spatio-temporal representation and reasoning. This revolutionary new field is increasingly becoming a core issue within mobile computing, GIS/spatial information systems, databases, computer vision as well as knowledge discovery and data mining.

Developments in technologies have evolved in a much wider use of technology throughout science, government, and business; resulting in the expansion of geographic information systems. GIS is the academic study and practice of presenting geographical data through a system designed to capture, store, analyze, and manage geographic information. Geographic Information Systems: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a collection of knowledge on the latest advancements and research of geographic information systems. This book aims to be useful for academics and practitioners involved in geographical data.

The monograph written by John Mullane, Ba-Ngu Vo, Martin Adams and Ba-Tuong Vo is devoted to the field of autonomous robot systems, which have been receiving a great deal of attention by the research community in the latest few years. The contents are focused on the problem of representing the environment and its uncertainty in terms of feature based maps. Random Finite Sets are adopted as the fundamental tool to represent a map, and a general framework is proposed for feature management, data association and state estimation. The approaches are tested in a number of experiments on both ground based and marine based facilities.

Focuses on acquiring spatial models of physical environments through mobile robots The robotic mapping problem is commonly referred to as SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping). 3D maps are necessary to avoid collisions with complex obstacles and to self-localize in six degrees of freedom (x-, y-, z-position, roll, yaw and pitch angle) New solutions to the 6D SLAM problem for 3D laser scans are proposed and a wide variety of applications are presented

What is space? Is there space when there are objects to occupy it or is there space only when there are no objects to occupy it? Can there be space without objects? These are old philosophical questions that concern the ontology of space in the philosophical sense of ‘ontology’ – what is the nature of space? Cognitive science in general and arti?cial intelligence in particular are less c- cerned with the nature of things than with their mental conceptualizations. In spatial cognition research we address questions like What do we know about space? How is space represented? What are the representational entities? What are the rep- sentational structures? Answers to these questions are described in what is called ontologies in arti?cial intelligence. Different tasks require different knowledge, and different representations of knowledge facilitate different ways of solving problems. In this book, Jan Oliver Wallgrün develops and investigates representational structures to support tasks of autonomous mobile robots, from the acquisition of knowledge to the use of this knowledge for navigation. The research presented is concerned with the robot mapping problem, the pr- lem of building a spatial representation of an environment that is perceived by s- sors that only provide incomplete and uncertain information; this information usually needs to be related to other imprecise or uncertain information. The routes a robot can take can be abstractly described in terms of graphs where alternative routes are represented by alternative branches in these route graphs.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed postproceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Cognition 2004 held in Fauenchiemsee, Germany in October 2004. The 27 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 50 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on route directions, wayfinding, and spatial behaviour; description of space, prepositions and reference; meta-models, diagrams, and maps; spatial-temporal representation and reasoning; and robot mapping and piloting.

It is man’s ongoing hope that a machine could somehow adapt to its environment by reorganizing itself. This is what the notion of self-organizing robots is based on. The theme of this book is to examine the feasibility of creating such robots within the limitations of current mechanical engineering. The topics comprise the following aspects of such a pursuit: the philosophy of design of self-organizing mechanical systems; self-organization in biological systems; the history of self-organizing mechanical systems; a case study of a self-assembling/self-repairing system as an autonomous distributed system; a self-organizing robot that can create its own shape and robotic motion; implementation and instrumentation of self-organizing robots; and the future of self-organizing robots. All topics are illustrated with many up-to-date examples, including those from the authors’ own work. The book does not require advanced knowledge of mathematics to be understood, and will be of great benefit to students in the robotics discipline, including in the areas of mechanics, control, electronics, and computer science. It is also an important source for researchers who wish to investigate the field of robotics or who have an interest in the application of self-organizing phenomena.

People have dreamed of machines, which would free them from unpleasant, dull, dirty and dangerous tasks and work for them as servants, for centuries if not millennia. Service robots seem to finally let these dreams come true. But where are all these robots that eventually serve us all day long, day for day? A few service robots have entered the market: domestic and professional cleaning robots, lawnmowers, milking robots, or entertainment robots. Some of these robots look more like toys or gadgets rather than real robots. But where is the rest? This is a question, which is asked not only by customers, but also by service providers, care organizations, politicians, and funding agencies. The answer is not very satisfying. Today’s service robots have their problems operating in everyday environments. This is by far more challenging than operating an industrial robot behind a fence. There is a comprehensive list of technical and scientific problems, which still need to be solved. To advance the state of the art in service robotics towards robots, which are capable of operating in an everyday environment, was the major objective of the DESIRE project (Deutsche Service Robotik Initiative – Germany Service Robotics Initiative) funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under grant no. 01IME01A. This book offers a sample of the results achieved in DESIRE.

Musical robotics is a multi- and trans-disciplinary research area involving a wide range of different domains that contribute to its development, including: computer science, multimodal interfaces and processing, artificial intelligence, electronics, robotics, mechatronics and more. A musical robot requires many different complex systems to work together; integrating musical representation, techniques, expressions, detailed analysis and controls, for both playing and listening. The development of interactive multimodal systems provides advancements which enable enhanced human-machine interaction and novel possibilities for embodied robotic platforms. This volume is focused on this highly exciting interdisciplinary field. This book consists of 14 chapters highlighting different aspects of musical activities and interactions, discussing cutting edge research related to interactive multimodal systems and their integration with robots to further enhance musical understanding, interpretation, performance, education and enjoyment. It is dichotomized into two sections: Section I focuses on understanding elements of musical performance and expression while Section II concentrates on musical robots and automated instruments. Musical Robots and Interactive Multimodal Systems provides an introduction and foundation for researchers, students and practitioners to key achievements and current research trends on interactive multimodal systems and musical robotics.