A Distributed Biconnectivity Check -- A Method for Building Small-Size Segment-Based Maps -- Learning when to Auction and when to Bid -- System Identification of Self-Organizing Robotic Swarms -- Synchronization Control by Structural Modification of Nonlinear Oscillator Network -- Frontier-Graph Exploration for Multi-robot Systems in an Unknown Indoor Environment -- Distributed Robotic: a Language Approach -- A Particle Swarm-based Mobile Sensor Network for Odor Source Localization in a Dynamic Environment -- Cooperative Multi-robot Target Tracking -- Comparative Study of Market-Based and Threshold-Based Task Allocation -- Single Operator, Multiple Robots: Call-Request Handling in Tight-Coordination Tasks -- Distributed Metamorphosis Control of a Modular Robotic System M-TRAN -- Preliminary Results in Tracking Mobile Targets Using Range Sensors from Multiple Robots -- Robotic Swarm Dispersion Using Wireless Intensity Signals -- Distributed, Play-Based Role Assignment for Robot Teams in Dynamic Environments -- Simultaneous Planning, Localization, and Mapping in a Camera Sensor Network -- Adaptive Robotic Communication Using Coordination Costs -- What to Communicate? Execution-Time Decision in Multi-agent POMDPs -- A Distributed Multi-robot Cooperation Framework for Real Time Task Achievement -- Empirical Evaluation of Auction-Based Coordination of AUVs in a Realistic Simulated Mine Countermeasure Task -- Principled Synthesis for Large-Scale Systems: Task Sequencing -- A Study on Proportion Regulation Model for Multi-Robot System -- Market-Based Multi-robot Coalition Formation -- Multi-robot User Interface Modeling.

The goalof the 8th Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS) is to exchange and stimulate research ideas to realize advanced d- tributed robotic systems. Technologies, algorithms, and system architectures will be presented and discussed during the symposium. DARS 2006 builds upon past successes and provides an exciting envir- ment for researchers to present and discuss their novel theoretical results, - plementations, and applications. DARS successfully took place in 1992, 1994, and 1996 in Japan (Riken, Wako), in 1998 in Germany (Karlsruhe), in 2000 in Knoxville (Tennessee, USA), in 2002 at Fukuoka (Japan), and in 2004 at LAAS in Toulouse (France). DARS 2006 will be held in the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota, in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science building. A total of 42 technical papers were submitted by authors from multiple countries. All the submissions were rigorouslyreviewed by the ProgramC- mittee. Of those submissions 24 were accepted. The overall outcome of the revision process is an excellent selection of papers that showcase the research in distributed autonomous robotics today. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved with the organization of DARS 2006. First, we would like to thank the members of the Program Committee, who did a thorough and conscientious job in reviewing a largenumber of papers.The members of the AdvisoryCommtitee providedinvaluablehelpandsupportthroughouttheprocessoforganizingthe conference. We warmly welcome all representatives from industry, government, and academia joining us in Minneapolis in July 2006.