Robotics is undergoing a major transformation in scope and dimension. From a largely dominant industrial focus, robotics is rapidly expanding into human environments and vigorously engaged in its new challenges. Interacting with, assisting, serving, and exploring with humans, the emerging robots will increasingly touch people and their lives. The Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR) is devoted to bringing to the research community the latest advances in the robotics field on the basis of their significance and quality. Through a wide and timely dis semination of critical research developments in robotics, our objective with this series is to promote more exchanges and collaborations among the re searchers in the community and contribute to further advancements in this rapidly growing field. As one of robotics pioneering symposia, the International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR) has established over the past two decades some of the fields most fundamental and lasting contributions. Since the launching of STAR, ISRR and several other thematic symposia in robotics find an important platform for closer links and extended reach within the robotics community. This twelfth edition of Robotics Research, edited by Sebastian Thrun, Rodney Brooks, and Hugh Durrant-Whyte, offers in its 14-part volume a collection of a broad range of topics in robotics. The content of these contributions provides a wide coverage of the current state of robotics research: the advances and challenges in its theoretical foundation and technology basis, and the developments in its traditional and novel areas of apphcations.
