Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the fundamental concept of Honda's robotized friction stir welding (FSW) technology, its implementation to mass produced vehicles and the future impact on the automobile industry. Design/methodology/approach – Based on an interview with...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the most recent IMTS show in Chicago, with emphasis on the new robot innovations and applications on display. Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth interviews with exhibitors of robots and accessories at the show. Findings – Robots...

Purpose – The Durable Reconnaissance and Observation Platform (DROP) is a prototype robotic platform with the ability to climb vertical cinder block surfaces at a rate of 25 cm/s, make rapid horizontal to vertical transitions, carry an audio/visual reconnaissance payload, and survive impacts...

Purpose – Lower‐limb exoskeletons and powered orthoses are external devices that assist patients with locomotive disorders to achieve correct limb movements. Current batteries cannot meet the long‐term power requirements for these devices, which operate for long periods of time. This issue...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel application of the recently introduced concept from computer vision to self‐localization of a walking robot in unstructured environments. The technique described in this paper enables a walking robot with a monocular vision system...

Purpose – Using a bottom‐up, model‐free approach when building robots is often seen as a less scientific way, compared to a top‐down model‐based approach, because the results are not easily generalizable to other systems. The authors, however, hypothesize that this problem may be...

Purpose – After a building collapse, people buried alive have to be localized and rescued. This requires the damage site's inspection and surveillance. These tasks are dangerous and challenging due to the area's hard‐to‐reach and hazardous environment. The damage site cannot be actively...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the challenges present in the development of hand exoskeletons powered by pneumatic artificial muscles. This paper also presents the development of a novel strain sensor and its application in a five‐fingered hand exoskeleton....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a high‐mobility in‐pipe robot platform and its navigation strategy for navigating in T‐branch pipes efficiently. Design/methodology/approach – For high mobility, this robot is developed based on inchworm locomotion. An extensor...

Purpose – Target tracking systems are generally computationally intensive and require expensive and power‐hungry visual sensors. On the other hand, the existing target tracking control approaches fail to track the target swiftly and accurately when the mobile robot moves in the diversified...