The Second International Conference on Robot Communication and Coordination targets the convergence of robotics and communications, acting as a common forum for the two communities. The event will promote cross-pollination of these two areas, adding to our understanding of the interaction between t…

The Second International Conference on Robot Communication and Coordination targets the convergence of robotics and communications, acting as a common forum for the two communities. The event will promote cross-pollination of these two areas, adding to our understanding of the interaction between these two exciting computer science research areas. Robotics is an interdisciplinary field, having benefited greatly from interactions with mechanics, control theory, and electronics. Lately, with the unprecedented growth of wireless communication technologies, the growing attention devoted to sensor networks and ad-hoc networks, and the emergence of commodity robotics platforms, networked robotics represents an exciting new research direction. Networked robotics offers a framework for coordination of complex mobile systems, thus providing the natural common ground for convergence of information processing, communication theory and control theory. It poses significant challenges, requiring the integration of communication theory, software engineering, distributed sensing and control into a common framework. Furthermore, robots are unique in that their motion and tasking control systems are co-located with the communications mechanisms. This allows the co-exploitation of individual subsystems to provide completely new kinds of networked or distributed autonomy.