Taking the Long View: A Report on Two Recent Workshops on Long-Term Autonomy [From the Field].

The article summarizes the results of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2011 Workshop on Long-Term Autonomy and the Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) 2011 Workshop on Autonomous Long-Term Operation in Novel Environments (ALONE). The workshops were attended by prominent researchers to establish the key issues involved in building robotics that operate in large-scale environments. Examples of the successes in the field are cited including the Mars Exploration Rovers.