Pedro U. Lima – författare

This book contains a selection of papersaccepted for presentation and discussion at ROBOT 2015: Second Iberian RoboticsConference, held in Lisbon, Portugal, November 19th-21th, 2015. ROBOT 2015 ispart of a series of conferences that are a joint organization of SPR –“Sociedade Portuguesa de Robótica/ Portuguese Society for Robotics”, SEIDROB –Sociedad Española para la Investigación y Desarrollo de la Robótica/ SpanishSociety for Research and Development in Robotics and CEA-GTRob – Grupo Temáticode Robótica/ Robotics Thematic Group. The conference organization had also thecollaboration of several universities and research institutes, including: Universityof Minho, University of Porto, University of Lisbon, Polytechnic Institute ofPorto, University of Aveiro, University of Zaragoza, University of Malaga,LIACC, INESC-TEC and LARSyS.

Robot 2015 was focussed on the Roboticsscientific and technological activities in the Iberian Peninsula, although opento research anddelegates from other countries. The conference featured 19special sessions, plus a main/general robotics track. The special sessions wereabout: Agricultural Robotics and Field Automation; Autonomous Driving andDriver Assistance Systems; Communication Aware Robotics; EnvironmentalRobotics; Social Robotics: Intelligent and Adaptable AAL Systems; FutureIndustrial Robotics Systems; Legged Locomotion Robots; Rehabilitation andAssistive Robotics; Robotic Applications in Art and Architecture; SurgicalRobotics; Urban Robotics; Visual Perception for Autonomous Robots; MachineLearning in Robotics; Simulation and Competitions in Robotics; EducationalRobotics; Visual Maps in Robotics; Control and Planning in Aerial Robotics, theXVI edition of the Workshop on Physical Agents and a Special Session onTechnological Transfer and Innovation. 

Cells and Robots is an outcome of the multidisciplinary research extending over Biology, Robotics and Hybrid Systems Theory. It is inspired by modeling reactive behavior of the immune system cell population, where each cell is considered as an independent agent. In our modeling approach, there is no difference if the cells are naturally or artificially created agents, such as robots. This appears even more evident when we introduce a case study concerning a large-size robotic population scenario. Under this scenario, we also formulate the optimal control of maximizing the probability of robotic presence in a given region and discuss the application of the Minimum Principle for partial differential equations to this problem. Simultaneous consideration of cell and robotic populations is of mutual benefit for Biology and Robotics, as well as for the general understanding of multi-agent system dynamics.

The text of this monograph is based on the PhD thesis of the first author. The work was a runner-up for the fifth edition of the Georges Giralt Award for the best European PhD thesis in Robotics, annually awarded by the European Robotics Research Network (EURON).