There have been major recent advances in robotic systems that can replace humans in undertaking hazardous activities in demanding or dangerous environments. Published in association with the CLAWAR (Climbing and Walking Robots and Associated Technologies Association) (www.clawar.org), this important book reviews the development of robotic systems for de-mining and other risky activities such as fire-fighting.Part one provides an overview of the use of robots for humanitarian de-mining work. Part two discusses the development of sensors for mine detection whilst Part thee reviews developments in both teleoperated and autonomous robots. Building on the latter, Part four concentrates on robot autonomous navigation. The final part of the book reviews research on multi-agent-systems (MAS) and the multi-robotics-systems (MRS), promising tools that take into account modular design of mobile robots and the use of several robots in multi-task missions.With its distinguished editors and international team of contributors, Using robots in hazardous environments: landmine detection, de-mining and other applications is a standard reference for all those researching the use of robots in hazardous environments as well as government and other agencies wishing to use robots for dangerous tasks such as landmine detection and disposal. - Reviews the development of robotic systems for de-mining and other risky activities - Discusses the development and applications of sensors for mine detection using different robotic systems - Examines research on multi-agent-systems and multi-robotics systems

The objective of this book is to cover advances of mobile robotics and related technologies applied for multi robot systems' design and development. Design of control system is a complex issue, requiring the application of information technologies to link the robots into a single network. Human robot interface becomes a demanding task, especially when we try to use sophisticated methods for brain signal processing. Generated electrophysiological signals can be used to command different devices, such as cars, wheelchair or even video games. A number of developments in navigation and path planning, including parallel programming, can be observed. Cooperative path planning, formation control of multi robotic agents, communication and distance measurement between agents are shown. Training of the mobile robot operators is very difficult task also because of several factors related to different task execution. The presented improvement is related to environment model generation based on autonomous mobile robot observations.

The research areas as well as the knowledge gained for the practical use of robots are growing and expanding beyond manufacturing and industrial automation, making inroads in sectors such as health care and terrain sensing, as well as general assistive systems working in close interaction with humans. In a situation like this, it is necessary for future robot systems to become less stiff and more specialized by taking inspiration from the mechanical compliance and versatility found in natural materials and organisms. At present, a new discipline is emerging in this area, called »Soft Robotics«. It particularly challenges the traditional thinking of engineers, as the confluence of technologies, ranging from new materials, sensors, actuators and production techniques to new design tools, will make it possible to create new systems whose structures are almost completely made of soft materials, which bring about entirely new functions and behaviors, similar in many ways to natural systems. These Proceedings focus on four main topics: • Soft Actuators and Control • Soft Interactions • Soft Robot Assistants: Potential and Challenges • Human-centered »Soft Robotics«.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 35th Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, KI 2012, held in Saarbrücken, Germany, in September 2012. The 19 revised full papers presented together with 9 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 57 submissions. The papers contain research results on theory and applicaiton of all aspects of AI.

Robots are used in industry, rescue missions, military operations, and subwater missions. Their use in hazardous environments is crucial in terms of occupational safety of workers and the health of rescue and military operations. This book presents several hazardous environment operations and safe operations of robots interacting with people in the context of occupational health and safety.

This book presents various computational and cognitive modeling approaches in the areas of health, education, finance, environment, engineering, commerce, and industry. It is a collection of selected conference papers presented at the International Conference on Trends in Computational and Cognitive Engineering (TCCE 2020). It shares cutting-edge insights and ideas from mathematicians, engineers, scientists, and researchers and discusses fresh perspectives on problem solving in a range of research areas.

This work addresses the environmental recognition of autonomous off-road vehicles. Algorithms, like deep learning, offer impressive performance regarding the classification and segmentation of a scene. However, context changes, scene variabilities, or disturbances pose significant challenges to these approaches and cause perception failures. A challenge is achieving the universal applicability of perception algorithms. Usually, an algorithm fails in particular situations due to unconsidered circumstances in the design phase, and complexity prevents fully considering all details. Accordingly, this thesis aims to increase the perception’s robustness through context and data incorporation. Furthermore, it derives concepts for transferring methods to other robots and scenes. A hint that such a task is achievable provides human cognition, which is remarkably skillful and adjusts to arbitrary situations. Biologically motivated perception and cognitive research indicate how an achievable perception design might function, leading to guidelines for artificial perception conception. The paradigm of behavior-based systems suits these criteria due to modularity, reactivity, and robustness. It allows realizing robust and transferable perception and control systems. Consequently, the thesis proposes a novel and reconfigurable behavior-based top-down and bottom-up perception approach. Quality assessment for data filtering and deviation control is a central aspect, resulting in improved perception and data fusion results. Attentional processing allows for selecting data based on attractiveness, task, environmental context, and history. Further, context assessment of classification results enables reasoning according to the robot’s memories and knowledge. Validation uses five demonstrator vehicles operating in diverse environments and fulfilling distinct tasks. Here, a robust performance was achievable, and perception adjusted well to the tested scenes and hardware layouts.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th Conference on Advances in Autonomous Robotics, TAROS 2014, held in Birmingham, UK, in September 2014. The 23 revised full papers presented together with 9 extended abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from 48 submissions. The overall program covers various aspects of robotics, including navigation, planning, sensing and perception, flying and swarm robots, ethics, humanoid robotics, human-robot interaction, and social robotics.

Wireless sensor networks have gained much attention these last years thanks to the great set of applications that accelerated the technological advances. Such networks have been widely investigated and many books and articles have been published about the new challenges they pose and how to address them. One of these challenges is node mobility: sensors could be moved unexpectedly if deployed in an uncontrolled environment or hold by moving object/animals.Beyond all this, a new dimension arises when this mobility is controlled, i.e. if these sensors are embedded in robots. These robots cohabit with sensors and cooperate together to perform a given task collectively by presenting hardware constraints: they still rely on batteries; they communicate through short radio links and have limited capacities.In this book, we propose to review new challenges brought about by controlled mobility for different goals and how they are addressed in the literature in wireless sensor and Robot networks, ranging from deployment to communications.