This paper presents a multi-robot mapping and localization system. Learning maps and efficient exploration of an unknown environment is a fundamental problem in mobile robotics usually called SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping problem). Our approach involves a team of mobile…

The localization of a mobile robot in a real environment is a complex task. In this paper, an algorithm that solves the global localization is presented. The proposal is based on a merit function that ranks different possible poses obtained…

A personal navigation system is proposed in the present paper. This system is based on the use of inertial sensors and will be a complement for the Global Positioning System in places where GPS signals are not available. Such places…

This paper describes the design of an autonomous blimp-based robot and its navigation system. The robot was based on a commercial kit and its dimensions were suitable for use in indoor environments. Our main goal was to develop a simple…

Can you imagine a useful task you would like a social robot to perform for you? This paper presents an Internet survey where participants were asked this question to identify applications for social robots. The applications mentioned by the participants…

If robotic companions are to be used in the near future by aging adults, they have to be accepted by them. In the process of developing a methodology to measure, predict and explain acceptance of robotic companions, we researched the…

In Fall 2007, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held the Urban Challenge, a street race between fully autonomous vehicles. Unlike previous challenges, the Urban Challenge vehicles had to follow the California laws for driving, including properly handling…

There is considerable interest in real-world formation-maintenance tasks, where robots move together while maintaining a geometric shape. This interest is motivated by promise of robustly and efficiently moving multiple robots along a path, guided by a human operator. This paper…

A Discrete Event System (DES) is a discrete state space dynamic system that evolves in accordance with the instantaneous occurrence, at possibly unkown times, of physical events. Given a DES, its behavior (the sequence of displayed events) may not satisfy…

In this paper we present our software framework for robotic applications, jde-neoc. This is the second implementation of our cognitive behavior-based architecture JDE, and it is aimed to overcome some of the limitations observed in three years using the first…