Purpose – Mobile robots become more and more important for many potential applications such as navigation and surveillance. The paper proposes an image processing scheme for moving object detection from a mobile robot with a single camera. It especially aims at intruder detection for the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and prototype implementation of a compact climbing robot with magnetic adhesion, which is only 8 mm high and allows for moving in any direction on the stators or rotors of power generators. Design/methodology/approach – After a...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel application of the well‐established 2D laser scan‐matching technique for self‐localization of a walking robot. The techniques described in this paper enable a walking robot with a 2D laser scanner to obtain precise maps of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a CAD‐based human‐robot interface that allows non‐expert users to teach a robot in a manner similar to that used by human beings to teach each other. Design/methodology/approach – Intuitive robot programming is achieved by using CAD...

Purpose – Friction stir welding (FSW) is a novel method for joining materials without using consumables and without melting the materials. The purpose of this paper is to present the state of the art in robotic FSW and outline important steps for its implementation in industry and specifically...

Purpose – So‐called humanoid robots, among a large class of service robots, are designed to work in close harmony with humans. Their anthropomorphism and its consequences have, however, been little studied. The purpose of this paper is to tackle this question by differentiating the...

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 – 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 – Interaction with robot systems for the specification of manufacturing tasks needs to be simple since the paper targets the widespread use of robots in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In the best case, existing practices from manual work could be used, to ensure current employees...