Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of snake‐arm robots to conduct inspection and repair operations within nuclear power plants. The systems that have been developed and deployed are described. Operational experience and results are provided. Inspection and repair of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the Automate Show (robots and vision) and the Promat Show (material handling) that ran jointly in Chicago, with emphasis on the new robot innovations and applications on display. Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth interviews with...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to design and implement a team of kid size humanoid soccer robots conforming to RoboCup Humanoid league. Design/methodology/approach – The project is described in two main parts: hardware and software. The hardware section consists of the mechanical...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to improve the traditional bug algorithms for the navigation of mobile robots in unknown environments by considering the limitations in previous works such as generating long path, limited to static environments as well as ignoring implementation issues....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a new nested rapidly‐exploring random tree (RRT) algorithm for fault tolerant motion planning of robotic manipulators. Design/methodology/approach – Another RRT algorithm is nested within the general RRT algorithm. This second nested level...

Purpose – The precise control and dynamic analysis of the electrical Stewart platform have not been so well treated in the literature. This paper aims to design a novel model‐based controller to improve the tracing performance of the electrical Stewart platform. Moreover, the simulations...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of a laser tracker, a laser interferometer system and a telescopic ballbar for assessing the positioning performance of a six‐axis industrial serial robot. The paper also aims to illustrate the limitations of these three metrology...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a universal approach for configuration synthesis of reconfigurable robots based on fault tolerant indices. Design/methodology/approach – A universal approach is introduced to determine the best configuration of redundant reconfigurable robots...

Purpose – Wafer transfer robots play a significant role in IC manufacturing industry and the end effector is an important component of the robots. The purpose of this paper is to improve transfer efficiency of a wafer transfer robot through study of its end effector, and at the same time to...