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This paper describes the development of the ARM System, an advanced subsea manipulator for weld inspection. ARM uses an advanced man‐machine interface and provides robotic control of the manipulator using techniques developed in factory robots. A more advanced robotic control system, Polecat, is currently being developed using experience gained from ARM and will be used in an ROV pilot trainer, Rovsim, and a number of European and commercial projects ‐ not just subsea but also in nuclear and factory environments.

Reports on a seminar entitled ‘‘Future trends in robotics'' organised by the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers, outlines recent developments in subsea robotics, reviews the evolution of surgical robotics, discusses the current state of application and research relating to mobile robots and looks at the progress being made in the development of climbing robots.

The following paper is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned successful innovator and leader, regarding the challenges of bringing technological discoveries to fruition. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The interviewee is Gianmarco Veruggio who is responsible for the Operational Unit of Genoa of the Italian National Research Council Institute of Electronics, Computer and Telecommunication Engineering (CNR-IEIIT). Veruggio is an early pioneer of telerobotics in extreme environments. Veruggio founded the new applicative field of Roboethics. In this interview, Veruggio shares some of his 30-year robotic journey along with his thoughts and concerns on robotics and society.

Gianmarco Veruggio received a master’s degree in electronic engineering, computer science, control and automation from Genoa University in 1980. From 1980 to 1983 he worked in the Automation Division of Ansaldo as a Designer of fault-tolerant multiprocessor architectures for fail-safe control systems and was part of the development team for the new automation of the Italian Railway Stations. In 1984, he joined the CNR-Institute of Naval Automation (IAN) in Genoa as a Research Scientist. There, he worked on real-time computer graphics for simulation, control techniques and naval and marine data-collection systems. In 1989, he founded the CNR-IAN Robotics Department (Robotlab), which he headed until 2003, to develop missions on experimental robotics in extreme environments. His approach utilized working prototypes in a virtual lab environment and focused on robot mission control, real-time human-machine interfaces, networked control system architectures for tele-robotics and Internet Robotics. In 2000, he founded the association “Scuola di Robotica” (School of Robotics) to promote this new science among young people and society at large by means of educational robotics. He joined the CNR-IEIIT in 2007 to continue his research in robotics and to also develop studies on the philosophical, social and ethical implications of Robotics.

Veruggio led the first Italian underwater robotics campaigns in Antarctica during the Italian expeditions in 1993, 1997 and 2001, and in the Arctic during 2002. During the 2001-2002 Antarctic expedition, he carried out the E-Robot Project, the first experiment of internet robotics via satellite in the Antarctica. In 2002, he designed and developed the Project E-Robot2, the first experiment of worldwide internet robotics ever carried out in the Arctic. During these projects, he organized a series of “live-science” sessions in collaboration with students and teachers of Italian schools. Beginning with his new “School of Robotics”, Veruggio continued to disseminate and educate young people on the complex relationship between robotics and society. This led him to coin the term and propose the concept of Roboethics in 2002, and he has since made worldwide efforts at dedicating resources to the development of this new field. He was the General Chair of the “First International Symposium on Roboethics” in 2004 and of the “EURON Roboethics Atelier” in 2006 that produced the Roboethics Roadmap. Veruggio is the author of more than 150 scientific publications. In 2006, he was presented with the Ligurian Region Award for Innovation, and in 2009, for his merits in the field of science and society, he was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, one of Italy’s highest civilian honors.

The following paper is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry PhD and innovator regarding his pioneering efforts and his personal journey of bringing a technological invention to market. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

The interviewee is Dr Howard Chizeck, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington (UW). Professor Chizeck is a research testbed leader for the Center for Neurotechnology (a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center) and also co-director of the UW BioRobotics Laboratory. In this interview, Chizeck shares the details on his latest startup, Olis Robotics.

Howard Jay Chizeck received his BS and MS degrees from Case Western Reserve University and the ScD degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served as Chair of the Department of Systems, Control and Industrial Engineering at Case Western Reserve University and was also the Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Washington. His telerobotic research includes haptic navigation and control for telerobotic devices, including robotic surgery and underwater systems. His neural engineering work involves the design and security of brain-machine interfaces and the development of devices to control symptoms of essential tremor and Parkinson’s disease.

Professor Chizeck was elected as a Fellow of the IEEE in 1999 “for contributions to the use of control system theory in biomedical engineering” and he was elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows in 2011 for “contributions to the use of control system theory in functional electrical stimulation assisted walking.” From 2008 to 2012, he was a member of the Science Technology Advisory Panel of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Professor Chizeck currently serves on the Visiting Committee of the Case School of Engineering (Case Western Reserve University). He is a founder and advisor of Controlsoft Inc (Ohio) and also is a founder and Chair of the Board of Directors of Olis Robotics, Inc., which was established in 2013 (under the name of BluHaptics) to commercialize haptic rendering, haptic navigation and other UW telerobotic technologies. He holds approximately 20 patents, and he has published more than 250 scholarly papers.

Virtual reality (VR) has recently become established as a suite of technologies capable of serving many companies′ future needs in design practice, training and organizational communication. Two years after the launch of a major British collaborative project involving 17 blue‐chip companies, VR is set to become adopted by many as their “information technology of choice” for the next century – some even aiming to establish in‐house facilities before the end of 1996. Proposes that, properly implemented, VR is capable of giving personnel at all company levels, who have a wide variety of educational backgrounds or skills, intuitive access to complex, computer‐mediated processes. Discusses some of the practical solutions to a commercially‐driven selection of demonstrator projects, while attempting to dispel some of the myths associated with VR, such as the necessity to don head‐mounted displays and instrumented gloves.

This paper aims to present an underwater climbing robot for wiping off marine life from steel pipes (e.g. jackets of oil platforms). The self-adaption mechanism that consists of a passive roll joint and combined magnet adhesion units provides the robot with better mobility and stability.

Adhesion requirements are achieved by analyses of falling and slipping. The movement status on pipes is analyzed to design the passive roll joint. The optimized structure parameters of the combined magnet adhesion unit are achieved by simulations. An approximation method is established to simplify the simulations conditions, and the simulations are conducted in two steps to save time effectively.

The self-adaption mechanism has expected performance that the robot can travel on pipes in different directions with high mobility. Meanwhile, the robot can clean continuous region of underwater pipes’ surface of offshore platforms.

The proposed underwater robot is needed by offshore oil platforms as their jackets require to be cleaned periodically. Compared with traditional maintenance by divers, it is more efficient, economic and safety.

Due to the specific self-adaption mechanism, the robot has good mobility and stability in any directions on pipes with different diameters. The good performance of striping attachments from pipes makes the underwater robot be a novel solution to clean steel pipes.