Purpose – This paper aims to review the AUVSI Conference and show held in Denver, Colorado with emphasis on unmanned vehicles or service robots, their application on the ground, in the air and in the water. Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth interviews with exhibitors of unmanned...

Purpose – This paper seeks to build awareness of how telepresence or service robots are coming to the aid of students who might not otherwise be able to attend school in person or others who might need to be in two places at once. Design/methodology/approach – Discussions with the...

Purpose – There is explosive gas in many disaster environments. The conventional search and rescue robots are not allowed to work in these environments, since they may cause explosion. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and development of the serpentine omnitread robot...

Purpose – The paper aims to describe the design and manufacturing process of a tele‐operative urban search and rescue tracked robot and discuss the advantages of a proposed novel track arrangement and other additional mechanisms, which help the robot to gain high manoeuverability on rough...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the static and dynamic characteristics of the rehabilitation joint. Design/methodology/approach – The rehabilitation joint is driven by pneumatic muscle actuators (PMAs). Rehabilitation robot is normally composed of several rehabilitation...

Purpose – This paper aims to present a hybrid actuator controller to obtain fast and stiff position response without any overshoot by blending input signals of a DC servomotor and a particle brake. Design/methodology/approach – The hybrid actuator controller has a module to estimate...

Purpose – This paper aims to develop a method to achieve automatic robotic welding and seam tracking so that three‐dimensional weld seam could be tracked without teaching and good welding formation could be accomplished. Design/methodology/approach – Adaptive image processing method was...

Purpose – Positioning is a key task in most field robotics applications but can be very challenging in GPS‐denied or high‐slip environments. The purpose of this paper is to describe a visual odometry strategy using only one camera in country roads. Design/methodology/approach – This...

Purpose – The paper aims to present a new mechanical scheme for a leg to be included in legged vehicles that simplifies the control actuations along the stride. Design/methodology/approach – The scheme includes three four‐bar links grouped in two mechanisms. The first one decouples the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to build a seven‐degrees of freedom (DOF) parallel‐serial robot system which has the advantage of mechanical novelty and simplicity compared with the existing platforms, and to share the experience of converting a popular motion base to an industrial...