DARS is now a well-established conference that gathers every two years the main researchers in Distributed Robotics systems. Even if the field is growing, it has been maintained a one-track conference in order to enforce effective exchanges between the main researchers in the field. It now a well-established tradition to publish the main contributions as a book from Springer. There are already 5 books entitled "Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems" 1 to 5.

Main topics at DARS 2004 addressed the challenges facing the distribution of embodied intelligence, the interaction of intelligent machines and the complex dynamics emerging from interacting agents

Inhalt
Reconfigurable Robots I.- Self-Reconfiguration Using Directed Growth.- A hardware/software architecture for the control of self reconfigurable robots.- Emergent Morphology Control of a Modular Robot by Exploiting the Interaction between Control and Mechanical Dynamics.- HydroGen: Automatically Generating Self-Assembly Code for Hydron Units.- Emergence of Intelligence Through Mobility.- Local Obstacle Avoidance with Reliable Goal Acquisition for Mobile Robots.- Adaptive Routing System by Intelligent Environment with Media Agents.- Multi-Robot Concurrent Learning in Museum Problem.- How a Cooperative Behavior can emerge from a Robot Team.- Vehicle Guidance System using Local Information Assistants.- Multi-Robot Perception.- Topological Map Merging.- An approach to active sensing using the Viterbi algorithm.- Using Group Knowledge for Multitarget Terrain-Based State Estimation.- Multi-AUVs for Visual Mapping Tasks.- Reconfigurable Robots II.- Cellular Robots Forming a Mechanical Structure.- Planning Behaviors of Modular Robots with Coherent Structure using Randomized Method.- In-Place Distributed Heterogeneous Reconfiguration Planning.- Distributed Metamorphosis of Regular M-TRAN Structures.- Task Allocation Multi-Robot Cooperation.- Multi-Robot Task Allocation Method for Heterogeneous Tasks with Priorities.- Decentralized Markov Decision Processes for Handling Temporal and Resource constraints in a Multiple Robot System.- Emergent Robot Differentiation for Distributed Multi-Robot Task Allocation.- Cooperative Control Method Using Evaluation Information on Objective Achievement.- Multiple UAV cooperative searching operation using polygon area decomposition and efficient coverage algorithms.- Control Architectures.- A Distributed Architecture for Autonomous UnmannedAerial Vehicle Experimentation.- Aerial Shepherds: Coordination among UAVs and Swarms of Robots.- Dispersing robots in an unknown environment.- Embedding heterogeneous levels of decisional autonomy in multi-robot systems.- Distributed Problem Solving.- Collective Energy Distribution: Maintaining the Energy Balance in Distributed Autonomous Robots using Trophallaxis.- Building Blocks for Multi-robot Construction.- Coordinating Aerial Robots and Sensor Networks for Localization and Navigation.- Pervasive Sensor-less Networks for Cooperative Multi-robot Tasks.- Group Behavior.- Communication Strategies in Multi-robot Search and Retrieval: Experiences with MinDART.- Value-Based Communication Preservation for Mobile Robots.- Dynamical Reconfiguration of Cooperation Structure by Interaction Network.- Collecting Behavior of Interacting Robots with Virtual Pheromone.- Swarm Intelligence.- Distributed Autonomous Micro Robots: From Small Clusters to a Real Swarm.- Modeling and Optimization of a Swarm-Intelligent Inspection System.- Scalable Control of Distributed Robotic Macrosensors.- Self-Organised Task Allocation in a Group of Robots.- Distributed Algorithms for Dispersion in Indoor Environments Using a Swarm of Autonomous Mobile Robots.- Motion Coordination.- Optimal Design Methodology for an AGV Transportation System by Using the Queuing Network Theory.- Control of Vehicle Cooperative Behavior in Non-Signalized Intersection.- High-Level Modelling of Cooperative Mobile Robot Systems.- Distributed Control.- Lateral and Longitudinal Stability for Decentralized Formation Control.- Decentralized Cooperative Object Transportation by Multiple Mobile Robots with a Pushing Leader.- Applications.- Attentive Workbench: An Intelligent Production Cell Supporting Human Workers.- Development of a Forward-Hemispherical Vision Sensor for Remote Control of a Small Mobile Robot and for Acquisition of Visual-Information.