Kent Meters is the leader in the manufacture of residential and bulk flow water meters, with 20 production operations in five continents producing some seven million meters annually, taking a 25 per cent share of the world market. Describes how one of the latest projects in the company’s...

Reviews the highlights of a two‐day European colloquium on information technology for climbing and walking robots held at the University of Portsmouth, UK, with progress reports on a Brite Euram project.

States that the Atlas navigation system is the fruit of four years’ work by a UK Robotics development team which, in conjunction with European partners, has been working on an ESPRIT funded programme to develop a fully automated road surfacing robot. Describes the project, which is now...

Explains how, four years ago, Scania, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of trucks and buses, decided to invest in a more environmentally friendly method for painting truck cabs. Describes how the solution chosen for a new paint shop at Scania’s assembly plant in Oskarshamn, Sweden was...

Describes one of the first robotic installations in a brickworks in Europe, now operating in the UK at the Warnham factory of Ibstock Building Products in Horsham. Explains how the ten Fanuc robots form part of a major investment in new machinery supplied to the UK plant by French company,...

Explains the raison d’être of the Sprite aerial robot and describes the system engineering, including a description of a range of interchangeable payloads to suit various mission applications. Outlines the performance and control of the robot, and discusses its special characteristics,...

Explains how the Automatic Control Department of the Instituto de Automatica Industrial (CSIC) in Madrid, Spain has been developing robots for over 15 years. This activity began in the 1980s with the realization of industrial robots and then the department focused its attention on the area of...

Outlines sustainable humanitarian demining procedures and some of the breaching and post‐conflict demining equipment currently in use. Explains that several projects have proposed the use of autonomous robots to search for antipersonnel mines. However, none has solved the problem which exists...

Describes the technological developments which are establishing the foundation for an exciting era of in situ exploration missions to planets, comets and asteroids with advanced robotic systems. Also outlines important concurrent terrestrial applications and spin offs of the space robotics...

Shows how two events one week apart earlier this year pointed the way for the UK to put itself in the vanguard of the next stage of intelligent robotics development. First came the publication of a report Technology and Market Review of the Robotics Sector which studied the state and prospects...