Purpose – This article aims to provide details of recent robotic exoskeleton developments and applications. Design/methodology/approach – Following an introduction, this article first considers some of the technological issues associated with an exoskeleton design. It then discusses military...

Purpose – The following article is a “Q & A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned successful business leader, regarding the...

Purpose – The purpose of this study has been to evaluate the technology of autonomous mobile manipulation in a real world industrial manufacturing environment. The objective has been to obtain experience in the integration with existing equipment and determine key challenges in maturing the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a more efficient strategy, which is easier to implement, i.e. the engineer can directly operate the target object without the robot to do a demonstration, and the manipulator is regulated to track the trajectory using vision feedback...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper was to propose a method based on an Artificial Neural Network and a real-time vision algorithm, to learn welding skills in industrial robotics. Design/methodology/approach – By using an optic camera to measure the bead geometry (width and height), the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a calibration method developed to improve the accuracy of a six degrees-of-freedom medical robot. The proposed calibration approach aims to enhance the robot’s accuracy in a specific target workspace. A comparison of five observability...

Purpose – This paper aims to develop a wave-transmitting mechanism for a travelling-wave-type omnidirectional mobile robot. Existing omnidirectional mechanisms are prone to movement instability because they establish a small contact area with the ground. The authors have developed a novel...

Purpose – This paper aims to use the Matsuoka’s neural oscillators as the basic units of central pattern generator (CPG), and to offer a new CPG architecture consisting of a dual neural CPG of circular three links responsible for oscillator phase adjustment, to which an external neural...

Purpose – This paper aim to build an information fusion model that can predict the bottom shape of welding groove for better welding quality control. Arc sensor is widely used in seam tracking due to its simplicity and good accessibility, but it heavily relies on the bottom shape of the...

Purpose This paper aims to present a new offline robot programming approach for automated trajectory generation on free-form surfaces targeted toward spray painting application. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, an incremental trajectory generation approach is developed where new paint...