FlexibleElectronics with NanoManufacturing

After the success of the inaugural conference, the purpose of the 2nd International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications (16 - 18 December, 2009, Orchard Hotel, Singapore) is to provide a venue where researchers, scientists, engineers and practitioners throughout the world can come together to present and discuss the latest achievement, future challenges and exciting applications of intelligent and autonomous robots.

ICIRA 2008 was advocated by the International Workshop on Robotic Grasping and Fixturing in June 2007, Wuhan, China. Robotics research, however, involves a wide spectrum of research and applications from the first industrial manipulator to Mars rovers, and from surgery robotics to cognitive robotics. Industrial and real-world applications are the force driving the research frontier further forward. The aim of the ICIRA 2008 conference is to promote interactions and collaborations between disciplines, which are beneficial in bringing fruitful solutions to the forefront, and to be an international forum that brings together those actively involved in intelligent robotics and applications.

These volumes of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Computer Science contain papers accepted for presentation at ICIRA 2008, held in Wuhan, China, October 15–17, 2008. The conference received 552 submissions from all over the world, which were subsequently peer refereed by the Program Committee, with the assistance of external referees. Among them, 265 high-quality papers were accepted for presentation at the conference, covering the most active topics on intelligent robotics such as robot cognition, robot learning, robot vision, motion planning, multifingered manipulation and intelligent control. Advances in robotized equipments applied in rehabilitation and medical robotics, health care and artificial limbs, digital manufacturing, electronic manufacturing, and manufacturing automation are also reported. The authors come from the following countries and regions: Australia, Austria, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iran, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK, and USA. In addition, ICIRA 2008 held a series of plenary talks, where we were fortunate to have such keynote speakers as Peter Luh, Tianmiao Wang, Jiping He, and Jun Wang, who shared their expertise with us in diverse topic areas spanning the range of intelligent robotics and application activities.