Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand users' acceptance of service robots by integrating perceived enjoyment of service robots and users' need to belong in a technology acceptance model (TAM) framework. Service robots are currently being used in homes and firms to provide...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the most recent AUVSI unmanned vehicle show, with emphasis on the new robot innovations and applications on display. Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth interviews with exhibitors of unmanned vehicles. Findings – Unmanned vehicles are...

Purpose – Current single head pick and place robots have reached their practical limit for throughput rates due to impractical speeds and acceleration, which often damage or lose the product being transferred. The purpose of this paper is to present a new system which uses 2 XY motion slides...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reduce the calculation burden and speed up the estimation process of Allan variance method while ensuring the exactness of the analysis results. Design/methodology/approach – A series of six‐hour static tests have been implemented at room...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the locomotion performance of all‐terrain rovers employing rocker‐type suspension system. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, a robot with advanced mobility features is presented and its locomotion performance is evaluated,...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanical, kinematic and biological aspects that would be required for a customized upper limb exoskeleton prototype operation. Design/methodology/approach – The research contained a literature survey, design, simulation, development...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a new methodological framework within which a compliant robotic joint can be studied. Design/methodology/approach – A new method is presented for detecting the direction of the robotic joint rotation when subjected to an external collision...

Purpose – As Chinese massage is increasingly popular, many physicians are needed these days. In order to promote the experience and skills of experts and reduce labour intensity during massage, a massage robot, which could reproduce the expert techniques with individualized manipulation...

Purpose – Mobile manipulators offer great capability, but their teleoperation is often an overwhelming task for humans due to the many degrees‐of‐freedom of control available from both the mobile platform and the associated manipulator. The purpose of this paper is to address the question...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a novel approach to the design of an autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to aid with the internal inspection and classification of tall or large structures. Focusing mainly on the challenge of robustly determining the position and velocity...