In this paper the European flagship project proposal Robot Companion for Citizens (RCC), grounded on the idea of developing robot companions for citizens, is taken as a case scenario for investigating the feasibility of ascribing rights and duties to autonomous robots from a legal and philosophical standpoint. In talking about rights and duties with respect to robots endowed with autonomous dec...

As opposed to common claims, selfreconfigurable robots have not yet been realized. Self-reconfigurable robots are supposed to be selfreconfigurable, physical, distributed and autonomous. Self-reconfigurable in the sense that they can change their own shape by rearranging constituent modules. Physical in the sense that they function in the real world. Distributed in the sense that control is dis...

This paper provides a brief overview of an underwater robotic system for autonomous inspection in confined offshore underwater structures. The system, which is currently in development, consist of heterogeneous modular robots able to physically dock and communicate with other robots, transport tools and robots, and recharge their batteries while underwater. These properties will provide the sys...

The development of autonomous mobile robots is continuously gaining importance particularly in the military for surveillance as well as in industry for inspection and material handling tasks. Another emerging market with enormous potential is mobile robots for entertainment. A fundamental requirement for autonomous mobile robots in most of its applications is the ability to navigate from a poin...

This paper deals with coordinating behaviour in a multi-autonomous robot system. When two or more autonomous robots must interact in order to accomplish some common goal, communication between the robots is essential. Diierent inter-robot communications strategies give rise to diierent overall system performance and reliability. After a brief consideration of some theoretical approaches to mult...

This paper aims to provide grounding for the development of social intelligence in autonomous mobile robots by highlighting that little has been done in developing an explicit social framework for a team of robots engaged in collaborative work. Only recently has work been undertaken on developing social attributes and functionality in robotics [23] [16]. This review provides a somewhat historic...

This paper presents some examples for fuzzy communication and intention guessing from the real life to the cooperation of intelligent mobile robots. In a special experimental environment a new communication approach is investigated for intelligent cooperation of autonomous mobile robots. Effective, fast and compact communication is one of the most important cornerstones of a high-end cooperatin...

In recent years, with the development of technology, introduction of autonomous mobile robots to environments close to human life is expected. Examples are shopping cart robots automatically returning to the shopping cart shed after shopping, and guide robots directing the way back to the starting position from the current position in unknown environment. In this paper, we propose a mobile robo...

Mobile robots are integrated into a search and rescue team as tools for searching victims in dangerous areas that is harmful for human, as to provide the perception data for map building, and as to follow the human entity during the mission. The teleoperated control and the autonomous path following is implemented on the robots for the semiautonomous navigation in the simulated firing scenario....

A stationary robot in an assembly line expects to execute all its hard-coded movements without any collision. Its recognition is limited to its tasks and the corresponding area of operation. In case of a failure an alarm is given and it stops working until a human being corrects the fault. The assembly robot does not react independently, which is the exact opposite to autonomous mobile robots. ...