| These Proceedings are a collection of selected papers presented at the Seventh International Conference organised by the EC GROWTH Thematic Network on Climbing and Walking Robots (CLAWAR). This conference, that was held in Madrid (September 2004), builds upon the highly successful previous Conferences held in Brussels (November 1998), Portsmouth (September 1999), Madrid (October 2000), Karlsruhe (September 2001), Paris (September 2002), and Catania (September 2003), and precedes the next CALWAR’05 to be held in London.
The interest in climbing and walking robots has remarkably augmented over recent years. Novel solutions for complex and very diverse application fields (exploration/intervention in severe environments, personal services, emergency rescue operations, transportation, entertainment, medical, etc.), has been anticipated by means of a large progress in this area of robotics. Moreover, the amalgamation of original ideas and related innovations, the search for new potential applications and the use of state of the art supporting technologies permit to foresee an important step forward and a significant socio-economic impact of advanced robot technology in the forthcoming years. In response to the technical challenges in the development of these sophisticated machines, a significant research and development effort has yet to be undertaken. It concerns embedded technologies (for power sources, actuators, sensors, information systems), new design methods, adapted control techniques for highly redundant systems, as well as operational and decisional autonomy and human/robot co-existence. |
