Information Processing in Autonomous Mobile Robots

This volume is a collection of 22 papers presented at the International Workshop on Information Processing in Autonomous Mobile Robots, held in Munich (Germany) in March 1991. Autonomous mobile robot technologies are generating significant interest because of their potential capabilities for future applications on the plant floor as weil as in the service industry. Autonomous robots may navigate around factories and laboratories, hospitals, office-buildings, airports or sirnilar public and sernipublic places. They may deliver equipment, coilect garbage and perform other such tasks. One of the major challenges for the field of autonomous mobile robot research is to develop robust and real-time systerns for perception and understanding of complicated real environments as weil as for intelligent decision-making with respect to proper actions. This Workshop was set up to stimulate discussion and the exchangement of new ideas on various aspects of autonomous mobile robot methodologies and applications. The main focal points of the Workshop program were sensing and perception, navigation and control, knowledge bases and computer architechtures as weil as various applications. The papers are prepared by leading experts in theses areas from Europe, Japan, the United States and by researchers involved in the interdisciplinary research project on Information Processing in Autonomous Mobile Robots (Sonderforschungsbereich 331) at the Technische Universität München.