Robots and autonomous agents have permeated every aspect of human life. They are not only omnipresent on the shop floors; they have pervaded our homes and are around us everywhere. Design methodologies and implementation techniques of intelligent machines are making progress in leaps and bounds. Smart interaction, cooperation, and pro-activeness are the hallmarks of modern intelligent machines.

This book deals with the theoretical and methodological aspects of incorporating intelligence in "Autonomous Robots and Agents". Challenges faced in the real world to accomplish complex tasks, which require collaborative efforts, and methods to overcome them, are detailed. Several informative articles deal with navigation, localization and mapping of mobile robots, a problem that engineers and researchers are grappling with all the time.

This edited volume is targeted to present the latest state-of-the-art methodologies in Robotics. It is a compilation of the extended versions of the very best papers selected from the many that were presented at the 3rd International Conference on Autonomous Robots and Agents (ICARA 2006) which was held at Palmerston North, New Zealand from 11-14 December, 2006. Scientists and engineers who work with mobile robots will find this book very useful and stimulating.

Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt
Toward Hierarchical Multi-Robot Urban Search and Rescue: Development of a 'Mother' Agent.- Multi-Robot Search and Rescue: A Potential Field Based Approach.- Probabilistic Target Search Strategy.- Localisation and Mapping With a Mobile Robot Using Sparse Range Data.- Applying High-Level Understanding to Visual Localisation for Mapping.- Development of an Optical Three-Axis Tactile Sensor for Object Handing Tasks in Humanoid Robot Navigation System.- Clustering Methods in Flock Traffic Navigation Based on Negotiation.- Using Learned Features from 3D Data for Robot Navigation.- A Centre-of-Mass Tracker Integrated Circuit Design in Nanometric CMOS for Robotic Visual Object Position Tracking.- Non-Iterative Vision-Based Interpolation of 3D Laser Scans.- RoboSim: A Multimode 3D Simulator for Studying Mobile Robot Co-Operation.- A Mobile Robot for Autonomous Book Retrieval.- Trajectory Planning for Surveillance Missions of Mobile Robots.- An Evolutionary Approach to Crowd Simulation.- Application of a Particle Swarm Algorithm to the Capacitated Open Pit Mining Problem.- Automatic Adjustment for Optical Axes in Laser Systems Using Stochastic Binary Search Algorithm for Noisy Environments.- An Analysis of the Chromosome Generated by a Genetic Algorithm Used to Create a Controller for a Mobile Inverted Pendulum.- Robust Flight Stability and Control for Micro Air Vehicles.- An Ecological Interface Design Approach to Human Supervision of a Robot Team.- Embedded RTOS: Performance Analysis With High Precision Counters.- Simple Biped Walking Robot for University Education Considering Fabrication Experiences.- Autonomous Stride-Frequency and Step-Length Adjustment for Bipedal Walking Control.- Application of Extended Kalman Filter Towards UAV Identification.- A Novel Strategy forMultiagent Coalitions in a Dynamic Hostile World.- Emotion Recognition Using Voice Based on Emotion-Sensitive Frequency Ranges.- FPGA-Based Implementation of Graph Colouring Algorithms.- Balancing Sociality in Meta-agent Approach.- Complex Stability Radius for Automatic Design of Gain-Scheduled Control Part I: Theoretical Developm.- Complex Stability Radius for Automatic Design of Gain-Scheduled Control Part II: Example on Autopilot Design.- Synthesis of Reconfigurable Hierarchical Finite State Machines.