Since 13 April 1993 BBC Television News has been produced with the help of remotely controlled mobile cameras. Except for certain programmes there are no camera operators on the studio floor — in fact there is scarcely anybody on the studio floor apart from presenters. Jack Hollingum went to...

The digit muscle is a new actuator that is small, light, simple and friendly. It has no stiction, is easily controllable and is exceptionally powerful.

Ricardo Hitec Ltd is pioneering the development of sensor‐controlled robotic systems suitable for use in a variety of environments including hazardous areas typical of the oil exploration, nuclear, and process industries, or industrial applications where physical limitations prevent operator...

In September 1992, Lamberton Robotics became “The Lamberton Robotics Division of James Howden & Company”, the Renfrewshire‐based engineering company, and now enjoys the support of Howden Group engineering strength and worldwide operations.

Modern‐day assembly lines for car and truck engines are highly automated installations. Although their basic design, relatively inflexible conveyor systems, and dedicated automatic stations have hardly changed over the years, they have become more and more complex. This has meant that the time...

Conventional industrial robots are low payload devices and this has been state of the art for many years. The laws of physics mitigate against the easy implementation of large robots. As robots become larger, the structure and drive natural frequency decreases, limiting the system gain and...

Driven by the Department of Energy's (DOE) expected 30‐year clean‐up of its nuclear weapons complex, a research team, co‐ordinated from Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, has built an automated environmental laboratory.

General Principles of 3‐D Vision Cameras: Vision systems aimed at upgrading on‐line operations of robotic‐based processes are major advances for intelligent automation. On‐line 3D visualization of the working scenes, with appropriate features extraction and analysis, are prerequisites...

For this review of heavy duty robots Jack Hollingum went to Scotland to see a tunnel‐boring machine just completed by James Howden, and met Dr Owen Davies, Technical Manager, who considered the opportunities for automation and robotics in such machines.

Irvine based Ayrshire Metal Products plc have come a long way since their origins in the wooden shipbuilding industry. Many of the changes have occurred in the last three years as part of an “automate to survive” £3 million investment programme.