Hajime Asama Knihy

Since its inception in 1996, FSR, the biannual „International Conference on Field and Service Robotics“ has published archival volumes of high reference value. This unique collection is the post-conference proceedings of the 4 th FSR in Lake Yamanaka, Japan at July 2003. This book edited by Shin’ichi Yuta, Hajime Asama, Sebastian Thrun, Erwin Prassler and Takashi Tsubouchi is rich by topics and authoritative contributors and presents the current developments and new directions in field and service robotics. The contents of these contributions represent a cross-section of the current state of robotics research from one particular aspect: field and service applications, and how they reflect on the theoretical basis of subsequent developments. Pursuing technologies aimed at realizing skilful, smart, reliable, robust field and service robots is the big challenge running throughout this focused collection.

The 6th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS 2002) was held in June 2002 in Fukuoka, Japan, a decade after the first DARS symposium was convened. This book, containing the proceedings of the symposium, provides broad coverage of the technical issues in the current state of the art in distributed autonomous systems composed of multiple robots, robotic modules, or robotic agents. DARS 2002 dealt with new strategies for realizing complex, modular, robust, and fault-tolerant robotic systems, and this volume covers the technical areas of system design, modeling, simulation, operation, sensing, planning, and control. The papers that are included here were contributed by leading researchers from Asia, Oceania, Europe, and the Americas, and make up an invaluable resource for researchers and students in the field of distributed autonomous robotic systems.