These monothematic proceedings represent a collection of papers presented at the 2nd European Robotics Symposium, held in Prague, March 26-27, 2008. The goal of the given selection of papers is to provide a comprehensive overview of the recent status in robotics research world-wide in the key areas of cognition, autonomy, adaptation and robustness in robotics. Special attention is paid to topics integrating classical robotics, computer science and artificial intelligence techniques with the ultimate goal to create real-world autonomous systems. This book also serves as an arena to show and compare different approaches to solution of open core problems in intelligent robotics - building autonomous robots that do only not co-exist with human entities but also cooperate and coordinate their activities with humans. If this is achieved, a deep penetration of self-contained and autonomous robots into real life becomes inevitable.

Therefore, the contributions presented herein reflect the most interesting topics of current days and comprise an introduction of novel methods and tools resolving robotics-related problems in sensing and navigation, localization and mapping, cooperation and coordination of multi-robot systems as well as issues of human-robot interaction and applications.

Klappentext

At the dawn of the new millennium, robotics is undergoing a major transformation in scope and dimension. From a largely dominant industrial focus, robotics is rapidly expanding into the challenges of unstructured environments. Interacting with, assi- ing, serving, and exploring with humans, the emerging robots will increasingly touch people and their lives. The goal of the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR) series is to bring, in a timely fashion, the latest advances and developments in robotics on the basis of their significance and quality. It is our hope that the wider dissemination of research - velopments will stimulate more exchanges and collaborations among the research community and contribute to further advancement of this rapidly growing field. The European Robotics Symposium (EUROS) was launched in 2006 as an inter- tional scientific single-track event promoted by EURON, the European Robotics Network linking most of the European research teams since its inception in 2000. Since then, EUROS has found its parental home under STAR, together with the other thematic symposia devoted to excellence in robotics research: FSR, ISER, ISRR, WAFR.

Inhalt

Adaptive Multiple Resources Consumption Control for an Autonomous Rover.- Adaptive Snake Robot Locomotion: A Benchmarking Facility for Experiments.- Architecture for Neuronal Cell Control of a Mobile Robot.- The Ares Robot: Case Study of an Affordable Service Robot.- Balancing the Information Gain Against the Movement Cost for Multi-robot Frontier Exploration.- Compiling POMDP Models for a Multimodal Service Robot from Background Knowledge.- Constraint Based Object State Modeling.- A COTS-Based Mini Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (SR-H3) for Security, Environmental Monitoring and Surveillance Operations: Design and Test.- Eyes-Neck Coordination Using Chaos.- Formation Graphs and Decentralized Formation Control of Multi Vehicles with Kinematics Constraints.- Global Urban Localization of an Outdoor Mobile Robot with Genetic Algorithms.- Grip Force Control Using Vision-Based Tactile Sensor for Dexterous Handling.- HNG: A Robust Architecture for Mobile Robots Systems.- Information Relative Map Going Toward Constant Time SLAM.- Measuring Motion Expressiveness in Wheeled Mobile Robots.- Modeling, Simulation and Control of Pneumatic Jumping Robot.- Multilayer Perceptron Adaptive Dynamic Control of Mobile Robots: Experimental Validation.- Path Planning and Tracking Control for an Automatic Parking Assist System.- Performance Evaluation of Ultrasonic Arc Map Processing Techniques by Active Snake Contours.- Planning Robust Landmarks for Sensor Based Motion.- Postural Control on a Quadruped Robot Using Lateral Tilt: A Dynamical System Approach.- Propose of a Benchmark for Pole Climbing Robots.- Rat's Life: A Cognitive Robotics Benchmark.- Reactive Trajectory Deformation to Navigate Dynamic Environments.- Recovery in Autonomous Robot Swarms.- Robot Force/Position Tracking on a Surface of Unknown Orientation.- Scalable Operators for Feature Extraction on 3-D Data.- Semi-autonomous Learning of an RFID Sensor Model for Mobile Robot Self-localization.- A Simple Visual Navigation System with Convergence Property.- Stability of On-Line and On-Board Evolving of Adaptive Collective Behavior.- A Unified Framework for Whole-Body Humanoid Robot Control with Multiple Constraints and Contacts.- Visual Approaches for Handle Recognition.- Visual Top-Down Attention Framework for Robots in Dynamic Environments.- Visual Topological Mapping.- 3D Mapping and Localization Using Leveled Map Accelerated ICP.