Robots are mechanical structures with sensors, effectors and control system. Coupling of sensory inputs to effector outputs requires a robotic control law. Unfortunately, the construction of such control laws is a complicated task. Automatisation of this process requires the incorporation of machine learning techniques. Robots capable of learning are not necessarily synonymous with intelligent ...

To achieve efficient and objective search tasks in an unknown environment, a cooperative search strategy for distributed autonomous mobile robots is developed using a behavior-based control framework with individual and group behaviors. The sensing information of each mobile robot activates the individual behaviors to facilitate autonomous search tasks to avoid obstacles. An 802.15.4 ZigBee wir...

Urban search and rescue is a difficult domain for autonomous mobile robots to operate in. The environment can be expected to be highly unstructured, with many obstacles and hazards for a robot to deal with. In addition, if human rescue teams are going to accept robotic assistance, they need to be assured that the robots are going to be helpful, not a hindrance. With these factors in mind, we ha...

To put more emphasis on real-world problems, the authors propose to extend the RoboCup competitions. In order to foster progress in the desired abilities the authors propose to expand the existing challenges by a set of simple tests. The passing of the entire set should lead to robots that are capable of working both autonomously and in cooperation with humans in different realistic scenarios. ...