Sensors for robotics 2015

Robot is currently one of the exciting and fast developing technologies changing the life of human being. It has been widely applied in lots of areas such as industry, agriculture, medicine, transportation, social service, military, space exploration, and undersea exploiting. Increasing attention by robot researchers has been paid to the robot sensor, as a key component of the robot. During the last decade, much effort has been done to develop robot sensors for robot perception, robot control, autonomous robot, human-robot interaction, and so forth. In spite of the large and increasing interest and promising applications, robot sensor design is a significant challenging, which is involved in not only sensor materials, structure design, manufacturing process, and calibration technique, but also signal processing, data fusion, and pattern recognition. For instance, remarkable examples of tactile sensors and systems have been proposed; however, their ability to address specific applications and their extension to other fields such as medical instrumentation, prosthetic devices, and biomechanics test is questionable. This special issue aims at exhibiting the latest research achievements, ideas, and advances in robot sensors.