The field of Intelligent Autonomous Systems (lAS) has attracted over the
years the attention of numerous research and industrial groups and has
by now arrived at an advanced level of development. The results have
been achieved through the synergetic use of concepts, techniques and
technologies drawn from electrical and mechanical engineering, control
engineering, systems science, computer science and management science.
Currently, the majority of working systems in practice are of the semi-
autonomous type needing some level of human intervention. Therefore much
effort is presently devoted in academic, research and industrial
environments towards further increasing the level of autonomy. This book
provides a collection of essays which cover the latest research in the
lAS field and present a rich set of results accompanied by detailed
descriptions of the relevant concepts, tools, techniques and
hardware/software designs. The book contains twenty three chapters
grouped in the following parts: Part 1: General concepts, architectures
and technologies Part 2: Mobile, walking and snake-like robots Part 3:
Applications PART 1 involves the first seven chapters which deal with
generic issues. Chapter 1 (by S. G. Tzafestas) provides some background
material, accompanied by a description of two research lAS prototypes,
namely a car-disassembly robotic system and a semi-autonomous/autonomous
robotic wheelchair. Chapter 2 (by G. Bolmsjo, M. Olsson and K. Brink)
presents a generic event-based control system structure for the control
of a robotic workcell, including its implementation, where the
autonomous operation is achieved via reactive replanning and
configurable corrections.
