"Software Engineering for Experimental Robotics" collects contributions that describe the state of the art in software development for the Robotics domain. It reports on innovative ideas that are progressively introduced in the software development process, in order to promote the reuse of robotic software artifacts: domain engineering, components, frameworks and architectural styles. It illustrates the results of the most successful and well-known research projects which aim to develop reusable robotic software systems. Most of the chapters report on concepts and ideas discussed at the well attended ICRA2005 Workshop on "Principles and Practice of Software Development in Robotics", Barcelona, Spain, April 18 2005. The authors are recognised as leading scholars internationally, and the result is an effective blend of fundamental and innovative results on research and development in software for robotic systems, where one common factor is the integration of reusable building blocks. Besides the advancement in the field, most contributions survey the state of the art, report a number of practical applications to real systems, and discuss possible future developments.
