Author Description

The term "planning" has been used extensively in different contexts. In a broader sense, planning is a process that establishes a sequence of operations to solve a problem before the solution is actually carried out. These operations usually deal with resources; two typical types of resources are time and space. For decades, planning has been studied in different communities, ranging from generic AI groups to various application-specific teams. This volume is focused on the problem of planning in the context of robotics. It discusses generic planning problems with robotics-specific considerations so that the task of planning can be discussed in a more uniform way. In addition, it includes the recent results in reconfigurable (mobile) robot planning, multiple robot planning, plan recovery, and planning in uncertain environments. It is intended to address the following audiences: senior/graduate students in engineering and computer science, A I researchers, and researchers/professionals who are trying to apply robotic planning techniques to different engineering applications. -- from Preface (p. [vii]-