Purpose – To construct a commercial agricultural manipulation for fruit picking and handling without human intervention. Design/methodology/approach – Describes a research activity involving a totally autonomous robot for fruit picking and handling crates. Findings – Picking time for the...

Purpose – Describes the design, construction, and performance of the OmniTread serpentine robot. Provides a review of other designs in this new area of mobile robotics. Presents innovative and unique mechanical and control solutions. Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical analysis of...

Purpose – To adapt the segway RMP, a dynamically balancing robot base, to build robots capable of playing soccer autonomously. Design/methodology/approach – Focuses on the electro‐mechanical mechanisms required to make the Segway RMP autonomous, sensitive, and able to control a football....

Purpose – To present an entirely new technology to be used in the in‐service inspection of storage tanks for hazardous products in several different industries. Design/methodology/approach – Current interior storage oil tank plate inspection is a very expensive and time‐consuming task....

Purpose – The aim of the research is to design, build and test a robot able to autonomously execute slope consolidation tasks. Design/methodology/approach – A multidisciplinary approach has been adopted to solve the problem: mechanical and control architecture have been conceived...

Purpose – Aims to describe design, prototyping and characteristics of a pole climbing/manipulating robot with ability of passing bends and branches of the pole. Design/methodology/approach – Introducing a hybrid (parallel/serial) four degree of freedom (DOF) mechanism as the main part of the...

Purpose – Aims to provide a summary of global robot statistics as presented in World Robotics 2004 , a new publication prepared jointly by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). Also aims to highlight the trends displayed...

Purpose – To review presentations on robotics in “less familiar environments” given at a seminar, “The changing face of robotics: inside and outside the factory”, organised by the UK Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). Design/methodology/approach – This paper covers the second...

Purpose – Describes how Jaguar Cars is evaluating a technology roadmap to assess future manufacturing processes. Design/methodology/approach – Describes the major production line technologies that are under close scrutiny for the next ten years for use in the Jaguar Cars' production plants...

Purpose – This technical paper reports the development of an industrial robotic labeling system, designed to insert identification labels on rolls of paper coming from an industrial paper machine. Design/methodology/approach – The system was developed for an existing installation comprising...