The Pallet Handling Device (PHD) is a five degree‐of‐freedom (dof) robot system under development by Stewart‐Glapat Corporation for autonomous loading of pallets into semi‐truck trailers at loading docks. The fully‐autonomous control is achieved using a programmable logic controller...

Discusses robot accuracy and repeatability and the mechanical and control aspects of robots that lead to errors occuring in static positioning and dynamic path following. Outlines the steps that should be taken to minimise errors and concludes that robot users should encourage manufacturers to...

A robot’s standard cycle time tends to be a primary criterion in estimating work cell through‐put. Many other factors, like robot placement, peripherals and optimization of the work envelope often are overlooked in the analysis. This paper provides insights into optimizing performance by...

Reports on the Robot & Automation show held at the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre alongside the MACH 2000 and other principal manufacturing shows. Some of the robot applications developed by exhibiting systems integrators are described including installations for monitoring clean room...

The Japan Robot Association (JARA) has been conducting standardization activities (ORiN: Open Robot Interface for the Network) in which the main subject is the network interface in the robot controller. In the 1999 international robot exhibition, our activities and results were opened and...

Since 1984, Kyushu Electric Power Company (KYUDEN) has made all‐out efforts to introduce outage‐free maintenance techniques. Robotic techniques are promoted as part of these efforts. Although the final objective is to develop a fully‐automatic hot‐line work robot, there are three steps...

Reports on the 31st International Symposium on Robotics, May 14‐17, 2000, Montreal, Canada. Teleoperation and automated remote operation dominated a high technology conference which included many new developments for the application of robotic technology.

This paper describes a novel drive mechanism for a robotic tractor for traversing pipelines, including sewers, in a poor condition. Traction is obtained by the reciprocating motion of two cylindrical brushes of a diameter larger than the pipe bore. The brushes move forwards down the pipe but...

The main drawback to programming robots offline lies in the poor accuracy of the robot. Robots are mainly programmed using the traditional teach and repeat method of programming which requires only good repeatability. As a result robots are manufactured with this in mind. Little is done to...

An outline is given of a vision guidance project, completed and the product brought to market by the National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture, Queensland, and of carrier‐phase GPS methods at an advanced stage of experimentation. These establish an infrastructure for a small autonomous...