IEEE Society of Robotics and Automation's Technical Committee on:

Networked Robots

The Robomotes: A Mininature Networked Robot Testbed (courtesy Robotic Embedded Systems Lab, USC)

A "networked robot" is a robotic device connected to a communications network such as the Internet or LAN. The network could be wired or wireless, and based on any of of a variety of protocols such as TCP, UDP, or 802.11. Many new applications are now being developed ranging from automation to exploration. There are two subclasses of Networked Robots:

1) Tele-operated, where human supervisors send commands and receive feedback via the network. Such systems support research, education, and public awareness by making valuable resources accessible to broad audiences.

2) Autonomous, where robots and sensors exchange data via the network. In such systems, the sensor network extends the effective sensing range of the robots, allowing them to communicate with each other over long distances to coordinate their activity. The robots in turn can deploy, repair, and maintain the sensor network to increase its longevity, and utility. A broad challenge is to develop a science base that couples communication to control to enable such new capabilities.

Networked robots pose a number of technical challenges related to network noise, reliability, congestion, fixed and variable time delay, stability, passivity, range and power limitations, deployment, coverage, safety, localization, sensor and actuation fusion, and user interface design. New capabilities arise frequently with the introduction of new hardware, software, and protocol standards.

The IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Internet and Online Robots was founded in May 2001. It originally focused on Internet-based tele-operated robots, but expanded to reflect a broader set of problems and applications. The name Networked Robots was approved and adopted in May 2004.

 

  • Spring 2009 Committee Chairs:
    • Hagita, Norihiro (hagita at atr dot jp)
      • ATR
      • corresponding chair - send email to join committee
    • Schilling, Klaus (schi at informatik dot uni-wuerzburg dot de)
      • University of Würzburg
    • Isler, Volkan (isler -at- cs dot umn dot edu )
      • University of Minnesota
  • Committee Chairs Emeritus:
    • Song, Dezhen (http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/dzsong)
      • Texas A&M University
    • Siegwart, Roland
      • Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zürich.
    • Goldberg, Ken (goldberg at ieor dot berkeley dot edu)
      • University of California, Berkeley
    • Chong, Nak Young (nakyoung at jaist dot ac dot jp)
      • JAIST
    • Burgard, Wolfram (http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~burgard/)
      • University of Freiburg, Department of Computer Science
    • Sukhatme, Gaurav (gaurav at usc dot edu)
      • University of Southern California

    •  

    Activities: 

    Founding Members:

    1. Anita Alexander
    2. Paul Backes
    3. George Bekey
    4. Massimo Bergamasco
    5. Antonio Bicchi
    6. Mirko Bordignon
    7. Rod Brooks
    8. Wolfram Burgard
    9. Shawn Brixey
    10. David Cannon
    11. John Canny
    12. Olivier Carmona
    13. Billy Chen
    14. Nak Young Chong
    15. Peter Coppin
    16. Diana Domingues
    17. Judith Donath
    18. Aydan Erkman
    19. Imad Hanna Elhajj
    20. Bob Farzin
    21. Manuel Ferre
    22. Paolo Fiorini
    23. Philippe Fraisse
    24. Toshio Fukuda
    25. John Gallagher
    26. Steven Gentner
    27. Stelios Gerogiannakis
    28. Steve Goldberg
    29. Norihiro Hagita
    30. William Hamel
    31. Blake Hannaford
    32. William Harris
    33. Hideki Hashimoto
    34. Elinam Hini
    35. Hirohisa Hirukawa
    36. Steve Hsia
    37. Huosheng Hu
    38. Han Pang Huang
    39. Masayuki Inaba
    40. Eduardo Kac
    41. Pradeep Khosla
    42. T. John Koo
    43. Tetsuo Kotoku
    44. Yasuharu Kunii
    45. Jose LM Lastra
    46. Anthony Levandowsky
    47. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
    48. Ren Luo
    49. Raul Marin
    50. Maja Mataric
    51. Gerard McKee
    52. Sang-Rok Oh
    53. Eric Paulos
    54. Rick Rinehart
    55. Javier Ruiz-del-Solar
    56. Daniela Rus
    57. Sudhir Sannarevappala
    58. Riko Safaric
    59. Alessandro Saffiotti
    60. Jurek Sasiadek
    61. Patrick Saucy
    62. Gaurav Sukhatme
    63. Klaus Schilling
    64. Paul Schenker
    65. Reid Simmons
    66. Petr Simacek
    67. Rory Solomon
    68. Dezhen Song
    69. Matthew Stein
    70. Poornima Suresh
    71. Jean-Jacques Slotine
    72. Carl Sutter
    73. Kazuo Tanie
    74. TJ Tarn
    75. Ken Taylor
    76. Sebastian Thrun
    77. James Trevelyan
    78. H.F. Machiel Van der Loos
    79. John Wen
    80. Jeff Wiegley
    81. Ning Xi
    82. Shinichi Yuta
    83. Alex Zelinsky

    We maintain a mailing list of over 200 members to report experiments, projects, and new initiatives. Anyone is welcome to join by sending email to Volkan Isler.

     

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    The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.