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.