Welcome to the 14th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2009) being held in the Munich Marriott Hotel, Germany, from June 22th to 26th, 2009.

The theme of ICAR 2009 will be "able robots", where "able" is the lexical intersection of "cap-able", "depend-able", "measur-able", "afford- able". These adjectives stand as synonyms for four rather fundamental and important features of robots which are supposed to deliver useful and economically competitive services in everyday environments under everyday conditions. Robots need to be "cap-able" of performing functions, which are considered to be of real use to a customer. These functions and capabilities have to be shown in a "depend-able" manner 24 hours per day, 7 days per week and 52 weeks per year. Service robots, which have become products, have become "measur-able" because their price performance ratio determines their competitiveness. Measurability of functions, components, system designs is needed to develop competitive service robot products. Finally, attention must be paid not only to the development of high technology but also to "afford-able" technology which leads to a competitive price performance ratio of the eventual service robotics products.

We solicit original high-quality contributions addressing the following scientific and technological issues:

cap-able
learning, interaction, reasoning, programming, robust perception, mobile manipulation

afford-able
wide-area navigation, localization, manipulation and grasping, obstacle avoidance, coverage

measur-able
performance measures & procedures, benchmarks, experimental robotics, standards

depend-able
robust autonomy, error recovery, remote diagnosis and monitoring; self-modeling, self-monitoring, self-repair

Special sessions will be organized for the following topics (amongst others):
- disposable robots
- robust autonomy
- robotic learning by experimentation