Dear Colleagues,

Robotic systems are defined as the integration of electronics, control engineering, and mechanical engineering, thus recognizing the fundamental role of control in joining electronics and mechanics. Indeed, the field of robotics in general and mobile robotics in particular have undergone remarkable transformation especially thanks to advanced control techniques.

One can define Control as what ties together mechanisms, actuators, and sensors in order to perform as assigned task with a prescripted degree of accuracy, speed, and robustness, all in spite of the possible disturbances.

In the robotic fields, we aim to fulfil one or the three following control objectives:

• Control & manipulation: dealing with articulated, multi-d.o.f. mechanisms, capable of manipulating objects and tools along a desired path, in terms of position and orientation. Example: industrial robots, precision positioning devices in various manufacturing machines, mass-storage devices, etc.

• Navigation, environment description, and map building: allowing the robot to move in an unknown environment. Halfway between fully autonomous mobile robots and simple reacting mechanisms, we can find automatic guided vehicles (AGVs), which are nowadays profitably deployed in many industrial scenarios.

• Path planning & collision avoidance: a goal-reaching feature where the mobile robots need to localize themselves in an unknown environment and to find their way to the final goal; planning can be done also by considering additional objectives, like the minimization of time or energy consumption.

Robotics & Automation Control Special Issue aims to provide and publish the latest advances and original contributions related to various aspects of mobile robotics, with a specific focus on automation and robotics approaches in the modelling, autonomy, and control of mobile robotics. Academics, researchers, and engineers in the fields are welcomed to present their latest findings, methodologies, theoretical foundations, practical applications, and real-world implementations that contribute to the continuous growth of the field.

We look forward to receiving your contributions and assembling an outstanding collection of papers that will shape the future of mobile robotics.

Dr. Souad Bezzaoucha Rebaï

Section Editor

Control Theory; Mobile Robotics; Advanced Regulation; Observer Design; Nonlinear Techniques