Climbing and Walking Robots and the Support Technologies for Mobile Machines

The interest in climbing and walking robots has increased over recent years, addressing advanced application fields such as exploration/intervention in extreme environments, personal services, emergency rescue operations, transportation, entertainment among others, and to envisage robots evolving into electromechanical replicas of ourselves. In response to the new technical challenges in the development of these sophisticated machines, significant research and development effort has been undertaken. It concerns embedded technologies (for acuators, sensors, information systems), advanced design methods, adapted control techniques for highly redundant systems, as well as operation and decision autonomy and human-robot co-existence. Climbing and Walking Robots (CLAWAR 2002) provides research and industrial individuals in the international community with the opportunity to report their experience in this domain and allow the changes of ideas towards creating robot devices to be able to carry out difficult activities in demanding or dangerous conditions. Topics covered include: biological inspired systems; control of CLAWAR; hopping robots; multi-legged locomotion; and medical systems.