This paper describes the development and evaluation of the Handy 1 rehabilitation robot which is acknowledged as being the most successful low‐cost, commercially available rehabilitation robotic system in the world to‐date[1]. Over 100 people with severe disabilities have benefited from...

Major problems facing, particularly, the water and gas industries relate to the thousands of miles of underground transmission pipes, some of which are more than 100 years old and in need of replacement or ‐ as the gas industry is now doing ‐ relining with polyethylene. In any case, there is...

A report of exhibits at the Robot and Automation Show held at the NEC, Birmingham at the time of the 25th ISR. It highlights some of the new developments and products on show, leading with the description of a novel robot tube bender being exhibited for the first time. New products range from a...

The excellent specific stiffness and strength of carbon fibre reinforced composites make them especially interesting for applications in rotating machines. Unfortunately, these materials have the disadvantage that their manufacturing process is labour‐intensive, and thus slow and expensive....

FlexPalletizer IRB 640 is the name of a new palletizing robot developed by ABB that meets the special needs of the consumer goods industry, and particularly those of the foodstuffs and beverage sector. A total of 1,200 palletizing cycles per hour and a handling capacity of 160kg are among the...

A two‐day conference in May 1998 on unmanned vehicles gave a remarkable picture of the range of uses ‐ and particularly for military purposes ‐ to which robot vehicles are being put. Reconnaissance aircraft were by far the most strongly represented, although there was a US Navy paper...

Control of manipulator collision avoidance by using computer‐aided potential field method is studied. A repulsive force is artificially created using the distances between the robot links and obstacles, which are generated by a distance computation algorithm. Typical approaches for definition...

This paper describes the Active Telepresence System and the development of an augmented reality (AR) interface to enhance the operator’s sense of presence in hazardous environments. The initial enhancements to the user interface are a virtual instrument panel to aid navigation in a variety of...

Aircraft flight pressurization/depressurization cycling causes the skin to inflate and deflate, stressing it around the rivets that fasten it to the airframe. The resulting strain, exacerbated by corrosion, drives the growth of initially microscopic cracks. To avoid catastrophe, aircraft are...