IROBOT'05: 1st International Workshop on Intelligent Robotics

Abstract

Research in robotics has traditionally emphasized robot design, development and control, low-level sensing and control, actuator design and control, path planning and robot behavior engineering. In contrast, generally using robotic simulators, several Artificial Intelligence (Al) researchers are more concerned with providing real/simulated robots with higher-level cognitive functions that enable them to reason, act and perceive in an autonomous way in dynamic, continuous, inaccessible, and non deterministic environments. Combining results from traditional robotics with those from Al and cognitive science will be thus essential for the future of intelligent robotics leading to robust but autonomous and intelligent robots. The purpose of the 1st International Workshop on Intelligent Robotics IROBOT'05 was to bring together researchers, engineers and other professionals interested in the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques in real/simulated robotics to discuss current work and future directions of research. IROBOT 2005 received twenty two submissions from six countries with Portugal, Mxico and Spain being the most active participants. Topics of special interest were on robot design, development and control, autonomous vehicles, distributed robotic surveillance, path planning, simulation of multirobot systems and cooperative robotics. Each paper was blindly reviewed by three senior program committee members. Seven high quality full papers were selected for publication in the Springer LNCS main volume of the conference proceedings, while ten papers were selected as full papers for the UBI/IEEE proceedings. We would like to thank all the authors who submitted their work to the workshop and enabled the success of IROBOT 2005. Special thanks to all members of the Program Committee who took upon most of the work in reviewing the papers enabling its accurate evaluation. The workshop besides having presentations of high quality research in the area of intelligent robotics was meant to be a forum of discussion, including two panel discussions on two very contemporary specific topics on the field of Intelligent Robotics: "Simulated vs. Real Robotics: Are the simulators really useful for Robotics?" and "Benefits and dangers of robotic competitions to promote scientific progress?". These discussions complemented the workshop enabling experience trading and higher contact between the researchers that attended the workshop.