Advances in Robotics Research

This book is a collection of scienti c papers presented at the German Workshop on Robotics¿a convention of researchers from academia and industry working on mathematical and algorithmic foundations of robotics, on the design and ana- sis of robotic systems as well as on robotic applications. As a new event of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur ¿ Robotik (DGR, German Robotics Society), the workshop took place at the Technische Universitat ¿ Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig on June 9-10, 2009. Covering some of the most important ongoing robotics research topics, this v- ume contains 31 carefully selected and discussed contributions. All of them were presented at the workshop that was attended by 80 researchers representing a wide range of research areas within robotics. The papers are organized in ten scienti c tracks: Kinematic and Dynamic Modeling, Motion Generation, Sensor Integration, Robot Vision, Robot Programming, Humanoid Robots, Grasping, Medical Rob- ics, AutonomousHelicopters,andRobotApplications.Two invitedtalksbyAntonio Bicchi and Atsuo Takanishi presented surveys of research activities in the elds of human-robotinteraction and humanoid robotics. The Program Committee was comprised of Karsten Berns, Oliver Brock, W- fram Burgard, Martin Buss, Thomas Christaller, Ru ¿diger Dillmann, Bernd Fin- meyer, Martin Hagel ¿ e, Bodo Heimann, Dominik Henrich, Gerd Hirzinger, Alois Knoll, Helge-Bjorn ¿ Kuntze, Gisbert Lawitzky, Jur ¿ gen Roßmann, Roland Siegwart, Markus Vincze, and Heinz Worn. ¿ After an extensive review and discussion process, the committee met at February 17, 2009, and composed the scienti c program from a pool of 49 submissions.