IEEE Society of Robotics and Automation's Technical Committee on:

Networked Robots

The Robomotes: A Mininature Networked Robot Testbed (courtesy Robotic Embedded Systems Lab, USC)

A "networked robot" is a robotic device connected to a communications network such as the Internet or LAN. The network could be wired or wireless, and based on any of of a variety of protocols such as TCP, UDP, or 802.11. Many new applications are now being developed ranging from automation to exploration. There are two subclasses of Networked Robots:

1) Tele-operated, where human supervisors send commands and receive feedback via the network. Such systems support research, education, and public awareness by making valuable resources accessible to broad audiences.

2) Autonomous, where robots and sensors exchange data via the network. In such systems, the sensor network extends the effective sensing range of the robots, allowing them to communicate with each other over long distances to coordinate their activity. The robots in turn can deploy, repair, and maintain the sensor network to increase its longevity, and utility. A broad challenge is to develop a science base that couples communication to control to enable such new capabilities.

Networked robots pose a number of technical challenges related to network noise, reliability, congestion, fixed and variable time delay, stability, passivity, range and power limitations, deployment, coverage, safety, localization, sensor and actuation fusion, and user interface design. New capabilities arise frequently with the introduction of new hardware, software, and protocol standards.

The IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Internet and Online Robots was founded in May 2001 by Ken Goldberg and Roland Siegwart. It originally focused on Internet-based tele-operated robots, but expanded to reflect a broader set of problems and applications. The name Networked Robots was approved and adopted in May 2004.

 

  • 2015 Committee Chairs:
  • Committee Chairs Emeritus:
    • Isler, Volkan
      • University of Minnesota
    • Hagita, Norihiro (hagita at atr dot jp)
      • ATR
    • Schilling, Klaus (schi at informatik dot uni-wuerzburg dot de)
      • University of Würzburg
    • Song, Dezhen (http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/dzsong)
      • Texas A&M University
    • Siegwart, Roland
      • Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zürich.
    • Goldberg, Ken (goldberg at ieor dot berkeley dot edu)
      • University of California, Berkeley
    • Chong, Nak Young (nakyoung at jaist dot ac dot jp)
      • JAIST
    • Burgard, Wolfram (http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~burgard/)
      • University of Freiburg, Department of Computer Science
    • Sukhatme, Gaurav (gaurav at usc dot edu)
      • University of Southern California

    •  

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    Networked Robots
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    Activities: 

    Founding Members:

    1. Ken Goldberg
    2. Roland Siegwart
    3. Anita Alexander
    4. Paul Backes
    5. George Bekey
    6. Massimo Bergamasco
    7. Antonio Bicchi
    8. Mirko Bordignon
    9. Rod Brooks
    10. Wolfram Burgard
    11. Shawn Brixey
    12. David Cannon
    13. John Canny
    14. Olivier Carmona
    15. Billy Chen
    16. Nak Young Chong
    17. Peter Coppin
    18. Diana Domingues
    19. Judith Donath
    20. Aydan Erkman
    21. Imad Hanna Elhajj
    22. Bob Farzin
    23. Manuel Ferre
    24. Paolo Fiorini
    25. Philippe Fraisse
    26. Toshio Fukuda
    27. John Gallagher
    28. Steven Gentner
    29. Stelios Gerogiannakis
    30. Steve Goldberg
    31. Norihiro Hagita
    32. William Hamel
    33. Blake Hannaford
    34. William Harris
    35. Hideki Hashimoto
    36. Elinam Hini
    37. Hirohisa Hirukawa
    38. Steve Hsia
    39. Huosheng Hu
    40. Han Pang Huang
    41. Masayuki Inaba
    42. Eduardo Kac
    43. Pradeep Khosla
    44. T. John Koo
    45. Tetsuo Kotoku
    46. Yasuharu Kunii
    47. Jose LM Lastra
    48. Anthony Levandowsky
    49. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
    50. Ren Luo
    51. Raul Marin
    52. Maja Mataric
    53. Gerard McKee
    54. Sang-Rok Oh
    55. Eric Paulos
    56. Rick Rinehart
    57. Javier Ruiz-del-Solar
    58. Daniela Rus
    59. Sudhir Sannarevappala
    60. Riko Safaric
    61. Alessandro Saffiotti
    62. Jurek Sasiadek
    63. Patrick Saucy
    64. Gaurav Sukhatme
    65. Klaus Schilling
    66. Paul Schenker
    67. Reid Simmons
    68. Petr Simacek
    69. Rory Solomon
    70. Dezhen Song
    71. Matthew Stein
    72. Poornima Suresh
    73. Jean-Jacques Slotine
    74. Carl Sutter
    75. Kazuo Tanie
    76. TJ Tarn
    77. Ken Taylor
    78. Sebastian Thrun
    79. James Trevelyan
    80. H.F. Machiel Van der Loos
    81. John Wen
    82. Jeff Wiegley
    83. Ning Xi
    84. Shinichi Yuta
    85. Alex Zelinsky

    We maintain a mailing list of over 300 members to report experiments, projects, and new initiatives. Anyone is welcome to join by sending email to the corresponding chairs.