The Path to Autonomous Robots, . 2nd Printing. 2008 Essays in Honor of George A. Bekey

The principal chapters of this book form a collection of technical articles sp- ning many areas of research in robotics, these are followed by a set of short r- iniscences and tributes written by former students of Professor George A. Bekey. Professor Bekey, a pioneer in robotics, retired from the University of Southern C- ifornia (USC) in 2002 after serving on its faculty for forty years. He maintains an association with USC as University Professor Emeritus. Professor Bekey turned 80 in June 2008 - this is his Festschrift. As one of Professor Bekey?s former students, it has been my privilege to know him for many years. This book represents the collective warm feelings of his former students, who remember their association with him in the fondest terms. Part I of this book is composed of technical chapters representing threads of active robotics research knitted loosely together. In many cases the themes of the chapters have their origins in the work the authors did when they were graduate students with Professor Bekey. These chapters are written for the reader interested in a sampling of modern research in Autonomous Robots. It is my hope that, for the serious reader, these chapters will serve as invitations to explore the ?eld via further reading and research.

Recent Research in Autonomous Robots.- Mobile Robots for Polar Remote Sensing.- Guidance and Control of Formation Flying Spacecraft.- Adaptive Sampling for Field Reconstruction With Multiple Moblie Robots.- Grasping Affordances: Learning to Connet vission to Hand Action.- Intelligent Robotics for Assistive Healthcare and Therapy.- A New Direction in Human-Robot Interaction; A Lesson from star Wars?.- Neurorobotics Primer.- Learning Inverse Dynamics by Gaussian process Begrression under the Multi-Task Learning Framework.- Tributes and Recollections from Former Students.- Professor George Albert Bekey.- Current History of the Bekey Tribe.- Recollections and Tributes.