The International Symposia on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS) started at Riken, Japan in 1992. Since then, the DARS symposia have been held every two years: in 1994 and 1996 in Japan (Riken, Wako), in 1998 in Germany (Karlsruhe), in 2000 in the USA (Knoxville, TN), in 2002 in Japan (Fukuoka), in 2004 in France (Toulouse), and in 2006 in the USA (Minneapolis, MN). The 9th DARS symposium, which was held during November 17–19 in T- kuba, Japan, hosted 84 participants from 13 countries. The 48 papers presented there were selected through rigorous peer review with a 50% acceptance ratio. Along with three invited talks, they addressed the spreading research fields of DARS, which are classifiable along two streams: theoretical and standard studies of DARS, and interdisciplinary studies using DARS concepts. The former stream includes multi-robot cooperation (task assignment methodology among multiple robots, multi-robot localization, etc.), swarm intelligence, and modular robots. The latter includes distributed sensing, mobiligence, ambient intelligence, and mul- agent systems interaction with human beings. This book not only offers readers the latest research results related to DARS from theoretical studies to application-oriented ones; it also describes the present trends of this field. With the diversity and depth revealed herein, we expect that DARS technologies will flourish soon.

From the Back Cover

This book of the Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS 2008) provides broad coverage of the technical issues of the current state of the art in distributed autonomous systems composed of multiple robots, robotic modules, or robotic agents. The DARS 2008 dealt with strategies to realize complex, modular, robust, and fault-tolerant robotic systems. Technologies and hardware experiments, as well as system design, modeling, simulation, sensing, planning, operation, communication, and control are presented here. Specific topics include multi-robot cooperation, swarm intelligence, modular robots, distributed sensing, mobiligence, ambient intelligence, and multi-agent systems interacting with human beings.

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