Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to extract lessons learned from the Fukushima‐Daiichi accident, caused by a big earthquake and a huge tsunami, which occurred on 11 March 2011. Design/methodology/approach – Lessons learned are extracted after summarizing emergency response by robots...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review development of the non‐rigid robot alternative to the fixed axis robot designs. Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth interviews with the developer of the snake arm style robot and study of various applications employing this robot...

Purpose – At present, more than 100 million undetonated landmines left over from wars remain buried worldwide. These mines kill or injure approximately 3,000 individuals each year (80 persons per day), most of them civilians. They represent a particularly acute problem in developing countries...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the design of a training tool intended to improve deminers' technique during close‐in detection tasks. Design/methodology/approach – Following an introduction that highlights the impact of mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs),...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a real time 3D localization and mapping approach for the USAR (Urban Search and Rescue) robotic application, focusing on the performance and the accuracy of the General‐purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU)‐based...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an adaptive controller of nonlinear path following for a fix‐wing micro‐aerial‐vehicle (MAV) in flight. The adaptive controller discussed in this work was able to successfully complete the flight tasks in complicated terrain, with...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a path planning algorithm for a non‐circular shaped mobile robot to autonomously navigate in an unknown area for humanitarian demining. For that purpose the path planning problem comes down to planning a path from some starting location to a...

Purpose – Vision‐based inverted robot control exhibits a complex and a multi‐parameter estimation task. Compromises over speed and accuracy must be made to reduce the cost of the system, if high profile techniques are not utilized. The purpose of this paper is to present such a technique...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a step‐by‐step methodology for the design of parallel kinematic machines (PKMs), from the initial stages of the conceptual definition of a new machine to an optimum design fulfilling the complete set of design requirements....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the technology of capturing and processing weld images in real‐time, which is very important to the seam tracking and the weld quality control during the robotic gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) process. Design/methodology/approach – By...