Purpose – Introduces the Lemur IIb robot which allows the investigation of the technical hurdles associated with free climbing in steep terrain. These include controlling the distribution of contact forces during motion to ensure holds remain intact and to enable mobility through over‐hangs....

Purpose – Robots operating in the real world should be able to make decisions and plan ahead their actions. We argue that learning using generalized representations of the robot's experience can assist such a ability. Design/methodology/approach – We present results from our research on...

Purpose – This paper aims to present a novel modular robot that provides a flexible framework for exploring adaptive locomotion. Design/methodology/approach – A new modular robot is presented called YaMoR (for “Yet another Modular Robot”). Each YaMoR module contains an FPGA and a...

Purpose – The development of a novel omni‐directional inspection robot is presented, which is capable of delivering NDT sensors to surfaces on straight pipe, pipe bends and branch connections, overcoming the limitation that a test area over a pipe bend or past a branch or other obstruction...

Purpose – Human care and service demands will need innovative robotic solutions to make the day‐to‐day life of elderly and disabled people in home and workplace environments easier. The main objective of this work is to develop a new concept of climbing robot for this type of service...

Purpose – This paper seeks to describe how signs can be used as a part of the work task scenarios with service robot. Design/methodology/approach – The signs are used to control a work task of a mobile service robot. Tests are done in real outdoor and non‐structured environments with the...

Purpose – To report on the design and development of a robotic product carton packing system that handles both soft plastic pouches or bags and small individual serving boxes and places into shipping cartons. Design/methodology/approach – A food processing equipment OEM teamed with a control...

Purpose – Reports on trends in the design and application of robots in the Japanese automotive industry. Design/methodology/approach – Surveys the business practices of Japanese automotive manufacturers and their plants in Japan and overseas Findings – Since, the 1990s, Japanese...

Purpose – The objective of this study is to enhance the usage of teleoperation fields, such as in nuclear site decommissioning or nuclear waste disposal, by designing a stable, dependable and fault‐tolerant teleoperation system in the face of “extraordinary” conditions. These...