XVII
Preface
Reaching for the human frontier, robotics is vigorously
engaged in the growing challenges of new emerging
domains. Interacting, exploring, and working with hu-
mans, the new generation of robots will increasingly
touch people and their lives. The credible prospect
of practical robots among humans is the result of the
scientific endeavor of a half a century of robotic devel-
opments that established robotics as a modern scientific
discipline.
The undertaking of the Springer Handbook of
Robotics was motivated by the rapid growth of the
field. With the ever increasing amount of publications
in journals, conference proceedings and monographs, it
is difficult for those involved in robotics, particularly
those who are just entering the field, to stay abreast of
its wide range of developments. This task is made even
more arduous by the very multidisciplinary nature of
robotics.
The handbook follows preceding efforts in the 1980s
and 1990s, which have brought valuable references to the
robotics community: Robot Motion: Planning and Con-
trol (Brady, Hollerbach, Johnson, Lozano-Pérez, and
Mason, MIT Press 1982), Robotics Science (Brady, MIT
Press 1989), The Robotics Review 1 and 2 (Khatib,
Craig, and Lozano-Pérez, MIT Press 1989 and 1992).
With the greater expansion of the robotics field and its
increased outreach towards other scientific disciplines,
the need for a comprehensive reference source com-
bining basic and advanced developments has naturally
become yet more urgent.
The volume is the result of the effort by a number
of contributors who themselves are actively involved in
robotics research in countries around the world. It has
been a gigantic task to insightfully provide coverage of
all the areas of robotics by such a motivated and versatile
group of individuals committed to this endeavour.
The project started in May 2002 during a meeting
the two of us had with Springer Director Engineering
Europe Dieter Merkle and STAR Senior Editor Thomas
Ditzinger. A year earlier, together with Frans Groen, we
had launched the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics
(STAR) series, which was rapidly establishing itself as
an important medium for the timely dissemination of
robotics research.
It was in this context that we took on this challenging
task and enthusiastically began the planning to develop
the technical structure and build the group of contribu-
tors. To capture the multiple dimensions of the field in its
well-established academic core, ongoing research devel-
opments, and emerging applications, we conceived the
handbook in a three-layer structure for a total of seven
parts.
The first layer and part is devoted to the robotics
foundations. The consolidated methodologies and tech-
nologies are grouped in the four parts of the second
layer, covering robot structures, sensing and percep-
tion, manipulation and interfaces, mobile and distributed
robotics. The third layer includes the advanced applica-
tions in the two parts on field and service robotics, and
human-centered and life-like robotics, respectively.
To develop each of these parts, we envisioned the es-
tablishment of an editorial team which could coordinate
the authors’ contributions to the various chapters. A year
later our seven-member editorial team was formed:
David Orin, Frank Park, Henrik Christensen, Makoto
Kaneko, Raja Chatila, Alex Zelinsky and Daniela Rus.
With the commitment of such a group of distinguished
scholars, the handbook was granted quality, span, and
balance in the scientific areas.
By early 2005, we assembled an authorship of
more than one-hundred-and-fifty contributors. An in-
ternal web site was created to facilitate inter-part and
chapter cross-references, and to pace the schedule for
the development of the project. The contents were care-
fully tuned over the following year,and especially during
the two full-day workshops held in the spring of 2005
and 2006, well attended by most of the authors.
Each chapter was peer reviewed by at least three in-
dependent reviewers, typically involving the part editor,
and two authors of related chapters; and in some cases,
included external experts in the field. Two review cycles
were necessary, and even three in some cases. During
the process, a few more authors were recruited whenever
it was deemed necessary. Most chapters were finalized
by the end of the summer of 2007, and the project was
completed by the early spring of 2008 – generating, by
that time, a record of over 10 000 emails in our fold-
ers. The result is an impressive collection of 64 chapters
我的内容管理
展开
