Proceedings of a conference held in Manchester, 5th September 1997. U. Nehmzow, M. Recce and D. Bisset (eds.)
In the UK, a small but thriving community of mobile robotics research groups exists, a community that has successfully contributed in areas such as advanced sensor signal processing, machine learning techniques in mobile robot control, reactive robot control, navigation, emergent phenomena and collective behaviour of robot societies, and telerobotics.
Despite much effort and exciting claims in the mid 80s, progress has been slower than initially hoped. Whilst quantitative analysis of experimental data and independent replication of results is the norm in the natural sciences, this has only to a small extent been the case in mobile robotics. Instead, existence proofs and qualitative descriptions still dominate the mobile robotics literature.
``Scientific Methods in Mobile Robotics'' has two purposes. On the one hand, it is to provide a survey of mobile robotics research in the UK, providing a forum for both well established research enterprises as well as newly started projects. On the other hand, it is to provide a forum to debate the issue of scientific investigation in robotics, and to present the analysis tools already being used in the community. The conference will comprise of accepted contributions presenting robotics research and position statements by some of the leading robotics researchers in the UK.
Ulrich Nehmzow, Michael Recce and David Bisset (eds).