Purpose – Aims to measure the development and performance of a sensor‐augmented industrial robotic system for handling steel bearing races in an unstructured environment. Design/methodology/approach – Performs exhaustive experimentation during installation of the robotic system to assess...

Purpose – Aims to review the CLAWAR 2004 conference on climbing and walking robots. Design/methodology/approach – Selects key papers from the conference and presents a brief outline of the research undertaken and the conclusions reached. Findings – The CLAWAR conference covered every...

Purpose – Highlights new robots introduced in the fall 2004 offer various benefits such as lower prices, internal cable management for arc welding, reduced floor space requirements, environmental protection and features for quicker application design and commissioning....

Purpose – The paper describes a pipe repair conducted in August 2004 using two types of snake‐arm robot. The pipe was located 5 m below the reactor core of Ringhals 1 nuclear reactor. Design/methodology/approach – The two types of robot worked co‐operatively to replace a section of...

Purpose – To construct a commercial agricultural manipulation for fruit picking and handling without human intervention. Design/methodology/approach – Describes a research activity involving a totally autonomous robot for fruit picking and handling crates. Findings – Picking time for the...

Purpose – To adapt the segway RMP, a dynamically balancing robot base, to build robots capable of playing soccer autonomously. Design/methodology/approach – Focuses on the electro‐mechanical mechanisms required to make the Segway RMP autonomous, sensitive, and able to control a football....

Purpose – The aim of the research is to design, build and test a robot able to autonomously execute slope consolidation tasks. Design/methodology/approach – A multidisciplinary approach has been adopted to solve the problem: mechanical and control architecture have been conceived...

Purpose – Aims to describe design, prototyping and characteristics of a pole climbing/manipulating robot with ability of passing bends and branches of the pole. Design/methodology/approach – Introducing a hybrid (parallel/serial) four degree of freedom (DOF) mechanism as the main part of the...