Editorial: Special Issue on the Fourteenth International Symposium on Robotics Research, 2009

From its historical background and its focus on quality, the International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR) is one of the most prestigious conferences in the field of robotics. Sponsored by the International Foundation of Robotics Research (IFRR), the goal of ISRR is to bring together active leading robotics researchers from academia, public institutions and industry to assess and share their views and ideas about the state-of-the-art of robotics and the future of the field. The Fourteenth ISRR took place from August 31st to September 3rd 2009 in Lucerne, Switzerland. The Technical Program featured 48 regular papers, half of them invited, half of them carefully selected out of 66 submissions, with the objective to cover some of the most important and fast emerging research topics in robotics. The presentations of these papers were arranged in 12 thematic sessions, each of which was chaired by members of the Program Committee. In addition, six invited presentations were given by Hugh Durrant-Whyte, Daniela Rus, Brad Nelson, Stefan Schaal, Sebastian Thrun and Makoto Kaneko during the Blue Sky session, held on top of Mount Pilatus, a 2132-meter-high peak in the vicinity of Lucerne. These talks and the following discussions endeavored to identify and explore the challenges that robotic research will have to address in the coming years. As a tradition of the ISRR, one evening was dedicated to an open video session, sponsored by Maxon Motors. Under the chairmanship of Oussama Khatib, the participants showed brief videos of their recent work and achievements, as well as amusing failures. The technical program of the 14th ISRR was complemented by a rich social program, which included a banquet on Mount Pilatus and a dinner on the shore of Lake Lucerne with robotic demonstrations. After the symposium, 12 papers were selected for this special issue of The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR). After review by at least two specialists for each paper, we decided to publish the following nine papers.