Sensor Devices and Systems for Robotics (Nato ASI Subseries F:)

As robots improve in efficiency and intelligence, there is a growing need to develop more efficient, accurate and powerful sensors in accordance with the tasks to be robotized. This has led to a great increase in the study and development of different kinds of sensor devices and perception systems over the last ten years. Applications that differ from the industrial ones are often more demanding in sensorics since the environment is not usually so well structured. Spatial and agricultural applications are examples of situations where the environment is unknown or variable. Therefore, the work to be done by a robot cannot be strictly programmed and there must be an interactive communication with the environment. It cannot be denied that evolution and development in robotics are closely related to the advances made in sensorics. The first vision and force sensors utilizing discrete components resulted in a very low resolution and poor accuracy. However, progress in VLSI, imaging devices and other technologies have led to the development of more efficient sensor and perception systems which are able to supply the necessary data to robots.