Purpose – Aims to show how robots can be used to prototype and prove key handling operations during the design of food processing machines. This can reduce both development time and costs. Design/methodology/approach – A number of examples of the use of robots during the design of food...

Purpose – This paper presents the design of climbing robots for glass‐wall cleaning. Design/methodology/approach – A systemic analysis of the basic functions of a glass‐wall cleaning system is given based on the research of working targets. Then the constraints for designing a...

Purpose – This paper aims to present a review of the NPE 2006, Plastics Show held in Chicago, IL with emphasis on robots, their application in the plastics industry and end‐of‐arm‐tooling. Design/methodology/approach – In‐depth interviews with suppliers of robots, injection molding...

Purpose – This paper aims to describe the development of a new software tool for the scheduling of real‐time control messages in a time‐triggered control network. The prime application area for such a solution is in real‐time robotic controllers and other similar machine control systems....

Purpose – This paper aims to make an industrial robot intelligently and remotely cooperate with humans to work in unknown unstructured environments. Design/methodology/approach – Presents a bilateral adaptive teleoperation control approach involving a contact force driven compensation with...

Purpose – To propose a new haptic modeling and contact analysis algorithm (modified long element method (MLEM)) to efficiently model deformation, to estimate elasticity, and to provide the characterization of contact with deformable objects, which is important in teleoperation and haptic...

Purpose – This paper aims to develop a service‐oriented distributed multi‐robot system based on manufacturing message specification (MMS) and new‐generation distributed object technology – web services for realizing remotely monitoring and controlling multiple heterogeneous robots in...

Purpose – In this paper, a CAD‐based integration method for analyzing and verifying robotic mechanisms design is proposed. The work is motivated by the fact that current structural design of complex mechanisms still requires substantial efforts of human intervention even with CAD assistance....

Purpose – To report on the technical and market status of robotic lawnmowers. Design/methodology/approach – The main manufacturers and models are named, and the general characteristics of small robotic lawnmowers are given, followed by a detailed account of the capabilities of a top‐end...

Purpose – To study the advantages of a modular approach to packaging‐machine design. Design/methodology/approach – Introduces the modular approach of this German company, with particular emphasis on its packaging robots and vision system. Uses a selection of food and pharmaceutical...