Welcome to ACRA 2003.

ACRA, the Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, is the annual conference for the Australian Robotics and Automation Association, and Australia and New Zealand’s leading forum for work in all areas of robotics and automation. ACRA attracts researchers and practitioners from around Australia and New Zealand, and an increasing number of roboticists from overseas. The work presented at ACRA 2003 is highly relevant to current interests in international robotics research, including hot topics such as autonomous mapping and humanoid robots. ACRA 2003 also has a definite Australian robotics flavour, with an emphasis on outdoor robotics and applications in the primary industries that continue to form the basis of the Australian and New Zealand economies in the 21st century.

We have endeavoured to ensure a balanced programme: maintaining a high standard of quality, while being inclusive of the up and coming students and junior researchers in the Australasian robotics community. The Programme Committee accepted 55 full papers for presentation and publication after a review process in which full manuscripts were reviewed by at least two committee members. The accepted papers were drawn from 64 papers submitted in total. In keeping with recent trends, the primary medium for the proceedings is CD-ROM, and we will be maintaining the proceedings online at the ARAA website. In addition to the technical paper programme, the programme includes a number of interesting live robotics demonstrations, the Annual General Meeting for the ARAA, and plenty of social opportunities for Australasian and international robotics researchers to network and develop cross-institutional links.

We hope you enjoy your time at the conference and that you come away knowing a little bit more, having met and discussed robotics issues with a colleague, having attended a paper session, or having had a quite technical debate over dinner. To all, we warmly welcome you to ACRA 2003, and to Brisbane.

Jonathan Roberts & Gordon Wyeth
Co-chairs ACRA
Brisbane, December 2003

on behalf of the Programme Committee.

Organisation

Sponsoring Organisations

Australian Robotics and Automation Association Inc.
CSIRO
University of Queensland

Co-chairs

Jonathan Roberts
Gordon Wyeth

Programme Committee

David Austin
Nick Barnes
John Billingsly
Thomas Braunl
Glen Bright
MWM Gamini Dissanayake
Matthew Dunbabin
Werner Friedrich
Ray Jarvis
Bruce MacDonald
Phillip McKerrow
Jonathan Roberts
Andy Russell
Pavan Sikka
Salah Sukkarieh
Koren Ward
Gordon Wyeth
Alex Zelinsky