The investigator and his colleagues organize a workshop to explore opportunities in robotics for synergistic collaborations among engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians. The workshop brings together engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians to discuss examples of research needs in robotics, to look for common themes, and to explore new ideas, rooted in mathematics, that could advance this area. A major product of the workshop is a report that summarizes the present state of the art and that lays out future opportunities for collaborative research. Robotics is concerned with the design of mechanical manipulators, the systems needed to control them, and various applications such as materials handling, assembly, exploration in extreme environments, prosthetics, and minimally invasive surgery. For their solution, problems in robotics have drawn heavily on techniques and ideas from engineering and computer science. It is becoming apparent that progress on significant open problems requires greater involvement of modern mathematics. This workshop combines engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians in a joint exploration of needs and opportunities in robotics. The workshop report is expected to stimulate both new interactions among researchers and new insights and approaches to this important class of problems.
