Purpose – This study seeks to develop a novel eight‐legged robot. Additionally, this study defines design and control of an eight‐legged single actuator walking ROBOTURK SA‐2 spider robot based on the features of a creatural spider. Design/methodology/approach – First, the single...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a new solution for wheel‐robot's adhesion and passing‐obstacles mechanism and the optimal design of magnetic adhesion unit with finite element methods. The new mechanism makes the robot have a simpler structure, finer passing obstacles and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a robot vision system for surface defect detection of 3D objects. It aims at the ill‐defined qualitative items such as stains and scratches. Design/methodology/approach – A robot vision system for surface defect detection may counter: high...

Purpose – Angular errors in the robot axes can make a significant contribution to robot positioning accuracy. This paper seeks to propose a new measuring method for measuring angular errors. Design/methodology/approach – New techniques were devised for the detailed investigation of joint...

Purpose – This paper aims to develop a new real‐time effective method for solving the inverse kinematics (IK) problem, especially for those manipulators with high‐dimensional nonlinear kinematic equations. Design/methodology/approach – The paper transforms the IKs problem into a...

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 – 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...