Editorial to the Special Issue on Robotic Computing

The First IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC 2017) was held in Taichung, Taiwan, April 10-12, 2017. The new IRC conference series addresses the synergetic interaction of computing technologies and robotic technologies. While it is true that computing technologies are integral parts of any autonomous robotic system, they are often considered ancillary to their development and find little attention in traditional robotic conferences. Much of the value of robotic systems is realized by computing technologies that grow more complex and present significant design, certification, and operational challenges for researchers and engineers to address. The IRC conference series aims at providing a forum where experts in the fields of Computer Science and Robotics can exchange experiences and ideas on the effective interplay of Robotic Computing technologies. On one hand computers continue to be humanized and a large number of cyber-physical systems are being developed to act upon the physical world. On the other hand the robotic community is looking ahead to robots of the 21st century that are versatile computing machines with high social impact potential, such as enhancing transportation safety, reducing agricultural pesticide use, providing human like companionship, and improving public safety and crime-fighting efficacy, among other things. The barriers that restrain robotic system diffusion significantly correlate to the complexity of designing, developing and operating their software control systems, which must be reliable, maintainable, intelligent, and safe. While the popularity and expectations of robotic systems grow rapidly on the current wave of technology improvements, robotic computing design tools can be significantly improved if they are to well support large scale robot deployment. IRC covers broad and diverse topics from a variety of Computer Science research areas that are relevant for Robotics,