Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots

The First International Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots (SIMPAR 2008) was held during November 3-6, 2008, in Venice, at Telecom Future Center, with a special session held in Padua, in the Archivio Antico of the university. The SIMPAR Conference was promoted to o?er to a selected number of - searchers the possibility to discuss, in a highly stimulating atmosphere, how to identify andsolvethe key issues necessaryto ease the development of robotso- ware,andboosta smoothshifting ofresults fromsimulationto realapplications. Novel robotics applications driven by society and industry call for the dev- opmentofsystemsofever-increasingcomplexity.Systemswithslidingautonomy, humanoid robots, distributed robots, and mobile sensor networks are just a few examples of this exciting area.But unfortunately, steady improvements in robot hardware have not been matched by corresponding advancements in robot so- ware. Besides fundamental open problems still waiting for sound answers, the lack of broadly accepted and reusable development tools, libraries, standards, and algorithms is one of the main technological obstacles towards the e?cient development of this new generation of robotics applications. Hence,simulationenvironmentsabletoreplicatearobot'ssensingandmotion abilitiesandtheirinteractionwiththephysicalworldareplayinganessentialrole in reducing the development time and cost of large-scale autonomous systems. Notwithstanding, their use is still regarded by many as suspicious. Seamless migration of code from general-purpose simulators to real-world systems is still ararecircumstance,duetothecomplexityofrobot,world,sensors,andactuators modeling. The above challenges drive the quest for next-generationdevelopment methods in robotics. We are convinced that SIMPAR has succeeded in giving a ?rst answer to this search, and it can be followed by proper scienti?c and engineering actions in the near future.