Experimental Robotics

At the dawn of the new millennium, robotics is undergoing a major transformation in scope and dimension. From a largely dominant industrial focus, robotics is rapidly expanding into the challenges of unstructured environments. Interacting with, assi- ing, serving, and exploring with humans, the emerging robots will increasingly touch people and their lives. The goal of the new series of Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR) is to bring, in a timely fashion, the latest advances and developments in robotics on the basis of their significance and quality. It is our hope that the wider dissemination of research developments will stimulate more exchanges and collaborations among the research community and contribute to further advancement of this rapidly growing field. Since its inception, wanted by my STAR Co-Editor Oussama Khatib some twenty years ago, the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER) was p- lished by Springer. Since the two past editions, ISER has found a more suitable home under STAR, together with other thematic symposia devoted to excellence in robotics research.

The International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER) is a series of bi-annual meetings which are organized in a rotating fashion around North America, Europe and Asia/Oceania. The goal of  ISER is to provide a forum for research in robotics that focuses on novelty of theoretical contributions validated by experimental results. The meetings are conceived to bring together, in a small group setting, researchers from around the world who are in the forefront of experimental robotics research.

This unique reference presents the latest advances across the various fields of robotics, with ideas that are not only conceived conceptually but also explored experimentally. It collects contributions on the current developments and new directions in the field of experimental robotics, which are based on the papers presented at the 10^th ISER held in Rio de Janeiro, July 2006.