Author Description

At the dawn of the new millennium, robotics is undergoing a major transformation in scope and dimension. From a largely dominant industrial focus, robotics is rapidly expanding into the challenges of unstructured environments. Interacting with, assi- ing, serving, and exploring with humans, the emerging robots will increasingly touch people and their lives. The goal of the new series of Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR) is to bring, in a timely fashion, the latest advances and developments in robotics on the basis of their significance and quality. It is our hope that the wider dissemination of research developments will stimulate more exchanges and collaborations among the research community and contribute to further advancement of this rapidly growing field. Since its inception, wanted by my STAR Co-Editor Oussama Khatib some twenty years ago, the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER) was p- lished by Springer. Since the two past editions, ISER has found a more suitable home under STAR, together with other thematic symposia devoted to excellence in robotics research.