Special Issue on the Tenth International Symposium on Experimental Robotics

This special issue consists of ten papers drawn from presentations at the Tenth International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER). ISER is a series of biennial symposia whose goal is to provide the robotics community with a forum for research driven by creative ideas, bold visions, new systems, and novel applications of robotics, emphasizing experimental work. The tradition in ISER is to foster scholarly work that either addresses validation of theoretical paradigms through careful experimentation or the creation of novel experimental platforms that in turn inspire new theoretical paradigms. The Tenth Symposium was held on July 6–10, 2006 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The program included technical papers reporting on new theoretical and experimental results, as well as position papers focused on new visions and trends for the field. The topics of the technical sessions covered a broad spectrum of experimental robotics research activities. The sessions were on manipulation, vision, navigation, medical and bio-robotics, estimation and mapping, field robotics, estimation and control, estimation and localization, design, cooperative control, and humanoids. The papers present exciting results in experimental robotics spanning a wide range of problem areas.