Robotic Autonomy & Control

This book explores robotic autonomy and control with a focus on the U.S. Army Research Laboratory's initiation of research targeting robotics technologies for asymmetric warfare in urban terrain. The vision for this tactical domain calls for small robots suited to manoeuvre indoors as well as outdoors, perhaps sharing space with troops, with sensors to perceive the immediate surroundings, and sufficient intelligence to enable unsupervised operation. Also discussed is the scalability of robotic controllers and the effects of progressive levels of autonomy on robotic reconnaissance tasks and intuitive speech-based robotic control.