Special issue on selected papers from Robotics: Science and Systems 2010

Abstract

This issue of Autonomous Robots is the second of two special journal issues compiled from selected papers presented at the sixth Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) Conference, held at the Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain in June 2010. The first special issue was recently published by the International Journal of Robotics Research. RSS is a single-track conference, with the aim of bringing together researchers from all areas of robotics, showcasing the most recent and significant advances in the field, and providing a forum for academic discourse for the robotics community. The conference brought together 315 researchers from academic institutions and industry from around the world. The conference program featured 40 papers, each carefully chosen in a rigorous review process from 239 submissions, four invited talks by leading scientists from research fields related or relevant to robotics, and two Early Career Spotlight Presentations by promising young researchers from our community. The technical program covered a wide range of research areas, including control, sensing, perception, manipulation, mechanical design, actuation, machine learning, motion planning, probabilistic robotics, and planning. The presentations addressed an equally broad range of robot types, including swimming, diving, driving, and flying robots, as well as many application areas, including autonomous driving, exoskeletons, mobile manipulation, and molecular biology. The broad scope of the conference is reflected in the papers selected for this volume. The papers present a novel