Robotics: Science and Systems II

Robotics research is the darling of technology these days with competitions like the DARPA Grand Challenge. Finding out where the cutting edge is often a continuing search of online sources. This compendium of papers from Robotics: Science and Systems conference held in 2006 is probably a quicker means of obtaining such information. The papers cover research work across the robotic spectrum, from mouthfuls like “Development of Methodology for Design and Analysis of Physically Cooperating Robot and Applications to Other Robotic Systems” to “Self-supervised Monocular Road Detection in Desert Terrain.” The latter addresses vision techniques used in Standford’s DARPA Grand Challenge entry. The former describes a way to treat cooperating robots as linked entities with multiple degrees of freedom. There are over 30 papers in the collection that vary in technical depth, but all are directly applicable to some aspect of robotic control, planning, or operation. You will likely find yourself out of your depth with some papers and very comfortable with others depending upon your background. Often the papers’ reference material will be invaluable when you need more details since these complex topics are difficult to fit into a short paper. But if you are looking for the cutting edge, you will definitely find it here.