Trends of Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems

Though flexible and robust robotic systems have been required in various fields, sufficient functionality has not yet been realized with currently available technologies in spite of all the efforts to develop intelligent robots. Instead of single-sophisticated-robot-oriented researches, distributed autonomous robotic systems (DARS) have recently attracted the attention of many researchers as a new approach for flexible and robust systems. In this chapter, the trends of DARS are described introducing their background and motivations. Then, the subjects on DARS are mentioned, and approaches and assumptions in DARS researches are classified.