Complex Robotic Systems

Robotic systems have proved themselves to be of increasing importance and are widely adopted to substitute for humans in repetitive or hazardous situations. Their diffusion has outgrown the limits of industrial applications in manufacturing systems to co ver all aspects of exploration and servicing in hostile environments such as undersea, outer space, battlefields and nuclear plants. Complex robotic systems - ie robotic systems with a complex structure and architecture - are gaining increasing attention from both the academic community and industrial users. The modelling and control problems for these systems cannot be regarded as simple extensions of those for traditional single manipulators, since additional complexity arises; to accomplish tasks there is the need to ensure co-ordinated motion of the whole system together with management of interaction between each component of the system. This book focuses on two examples of complex robotic systems - namely co-operating manipulators and multi-fingered hands. It is addressed to graduate students as well as to researchers in the field.