Daniel Polani

Andrea Bonarini

Brett Browning

Kazuo Yoshida

This book constitutes the seventh official archival publication devoted to RoboCup. It documents the achievements presented at the 7th Robot World Cup Soccer and Rescue Competition and Conferences held in Padua, Italy, in July 2003. The 39 revised full papers and 35 revised poster papers presented together with an overview and roadmap for the RoboCup initiative and 3 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 125 symposium paper submissions. This book is mandatory reading for the rapidly growing RoboCup community as well as a valuable source of reference and inspiration for R&D professionals interested in robotics, distributed artificial intelligence, and multi-agent systems.

RoboCup 2003: Robot Soccer World Cup VII

Francesco Masulli

Gabriella Pasi

The papers collected in this book are concerned with the application of the so-called "soft-computing" techniques to the aim of defining flexible systems. The topics covered witness the actual research trend towards an integration of distinct formal techniques for defining flexible systems. The contributions in this volume mainly concern the definition of systems in several application fields, such as image processing, control, asset allocation, medicine, time series forecasting, qualitative modeling, support to design, reliability analysis, diagnosis, filtering, data analysis, land mines detection and so forth. The papers presented in this volume are organized into three main thematic sections: Fuzzy Systems, Neural Networks and Genetic and Evolutionary Algorithms, although, as outlined before, some works employ more than one technique from these fields.

Soft Computing Applications

Serenella Besio

This book presents a comprehensive guide to the design of playing robots and the related play experiences. Play is a natural activity for building and improving abilities, and it reveals important particularly for persons with disabilities. Many social, physical and cultural factors may hinder children with disabilities from fully enjoying play as their peers. Autonomous robots with specific characteristics can enhance the ludic experience, having implications for the character of the play and presenting opportunities related to autonomy and physical movement, the very nature of robots. Their introduction into play thus provides everybody, and in particular persons with disabilities, new possibilities for developing abilities, improving general status, participating in social contexts, as well as supporting professionals in monitoring progress. This book presents a framework for the design of playful activities with robots, developed over 20 years’ experience at AIRLab - POLIMI. Part 1 introduces the play concepts and characteristics, and research results about play of children with different kinds of impairments. Part 2 focuses on implementing robots able to play. The design of playful activities is discussed, as well as the necessary characteristics for them to be useful in both general play and activities involving disability-related limitations. In Part 3, the defined framework is used to analyze possibilities involving robots available on the toy market, robots developed at research labs, and robots to be developed in the next future. The aim of the book is to give developers, caregivers, and users a set of methodological tools for selecting, exploring, and designing inclusive play activities where robots play a central role.

Andrea Bonarini

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