This section is to developed but a recent title Service Robots (R. D. Schraft, Gernot Schmierer, A K Peters, Limited, 2000) covering the wide variety of applications for robotic engineering seems (to the Editor), a good starting point....The following review is from the website Robot Books

"This beautifully illustrated book provides an overview of the developments in the use of robots in the service industry worldwide.

What is a service robot? In the evolution from industrial robots to human-like personal robots, these so-called service robots represent the halfway point.

They are mobile, manipulate things, interact with people, and carry out tasks independently that must otherwise be done by humans. They do not manufacture industrial goods, instead they perform tasks for people - they perform services.

The list of robots which are profiled and illustrated includes dozens of pioneering machines from around the world. Featured robots include: Smart Pump, AutoFill, Robin, and Oscar automotive refueling robots; A very cool six legged timber harvester; Tree-climbing and fruit-pickers; Agricultural and dairy robots; Teleoperated construction and digging machines;

Wall-climbing robots used for painting and window cleaning; Hazardous-duty robots; Autonomous vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers; Aircraft and ship cleaning robots; Office mail distribution and trash disposing robots; Pipe inspection machines; Surveillance robots for security and law enforcement; Tiny military Micro Air Vehicles; Firefighting robots; Automated trash sorting machines;

Mortimer the robotic butler; Espresso bots; Robotic bartenders; Hobby and recreation robots; Automated golf caddies; A tennis ball collector; Animatronics used in movies and entertainment; Underwater robots; Space robots and planetary rovers; And robots used in medicine, surgery, and nursing care."

Welshpool and District, Victoria, Australia

Rural Transaction Centre Welshpool and District, Victoria
http://www.dotrs.gov.au/rtc/locations/welshpool.htm

Unmanned Vehicles : Land, Sea and Air

Aerosonde robotic aircraft: A new paradigm for environmental observations
http://www.aerosonde.com/BAMS/BAMS-text.html

Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR)
http://www.acfr.usyd.edu.au/main.shtml

Ariel : Autonomous Legged Underwater Vehicle (ALUV)
http://www.irobot.com/rd/research_ariel.asp

Modeled after a crab, Ariel is designed to remove mines and obstacles on land and underwater in the surf zone. Its unique brand of legged locomotion capitalizes on a crab's agility, stability, and efficiency, and will allow Ariel to scramble over obstacles and crevices that traditional wheeled vehicles would find insurmountable.... more

Autonomous Undersea Systems Institute
http://www.ausi.org/

To develop a vision-guided robot helicopter which can autonomously carry out the following goal mission in any weather conditions and using only on-board intelligence and computing power

Automatically start operation and takeoff; Fly to a designated area on a prescribed path while avoiding obstacles; Search and locate object of interest in the designated area; Visually lock on to and track or, if necessary, pursue the objects; Send back images to a ground station while tracking the objects; Safely return home and land.

This goal mission capability encapsulates a number of crucial technologies which are applicable to : search and rescue; surveillance; law enforcement; inspection; mapping; aerial cinematography

GPS Autonomous-flight unmanned helicopter for observation of mudslide conditions around erupting Mt. Usu in Hokkaido, Japan

Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., at the request of the Public Works Research Institute of the Ministry of Construction of Japan, has begun conducting autonomous-flight observation of topographical and geological conditions in the area around Mt. Usu in Hokkaido using a Yamaha industrial-use unmanned helicopter equipped with GPS and, video and still cameras. Volcanic activity has continued at a high level since Mt. Usu's eruption earlier this month and flight by manned aircraft is presently under restriction....more

From April 23 to 26, 2000 Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. (YMC) was involved in joint observation survey of volcanic damage on Mt. Us in Abuta-cho, Hokkaido at the request of the Public Works Research Institute of the Ministry of Construction.

At YMC, we had already been involved in the development of autonomous- flight functions using our RMAX unmanned helicopter originally marketed for use in crop dusting in the agricultural field, and its effectiveness had been proved in ecosystem observation surveys in Mongolia....more

Fixed wing UAVs are limited in performing some tasks in the land and maritime environments
http://www.defence.gov.au/aerospacecentre/publish/paper46.htm

"Fixed wing UAVs are limited in performing some tasks in the land and maritime environments, such as the deployment and employment of acoustic sensors. These difficulties are further compounded when very low speeds are required, such as the recovery stage for confined land areas and sea platforms.

To overcome these limitations, a number of programs are being developed using vertical launch and recovery (VLAR) UAVs. Rotary- wing UAVs being developed under the US Autonomous Scout Rotorcraft Testbed (ASRT) Program include the Sikorsky Cipher weighing 115 kilograms and the Georgia Technical Institute American Sportscopter Ultrasport 331 miniature helicopter weighing 225 kilograms.

A further development aimed at exploiting the benefits of both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, similar to the V22 Osprey, is the Bell Helicopter Textron Tilt Rotor UAV which weighs 815 kilograms and can carry a 16.4 kilograms payload."

Autonomous helicopters are a promising research area due to their advanced capabilities and great flexibility. Besides having the ability to hover, which allows one to operate in areas unaccessible to other vehicles, an unmanned autonomous helicopter can perform tasks which would be exceedingly difficult or hazardous for a manned vehicle

Possible applications for this technology include close-up inspection of power lines, terrain surveying, search-and-rescue missions, filming movies, and the investigation and clean-up of hazardous waste sites.

The ultimate goal of this research at Stanford is to demonstrate the practicality of using inexpensive robot helicopters to perform tasks without the need for highly trained human operators. This research will bring the concept of object-based, task-leve l control to a new and exciting application environment.

Agricultural and Harvesting
http://www.service-robots.org/AgriculturalRobots.php

Inspection (pipeline and storage tanks inspection etc.)
http://www.service-robots.org/InspectionRobots.php

Service Robots : Fire fighting and Rescue
http://www.service-robots.org/FirefightingRobots.php

The world's tiniest helicopter demonstrates the efficiency of IMM's remarkable micromotors. With a length of 24 millimeters and a weight of 0.4 grams the helicopter takes off at 40,000 rpm

With a diameter of only 1.9 millimeters the electromagnetic motors can reach an incredible revolution speed of nearly half a million rpm on the one hand, and a considerable torque of 7.5 Nm on the other hand.

Typical applications of these motors are fast rotating systems, e.g. scanners, drive units in heart catheters or high-tech display systems. The motor was developed by IMM in cooperation with the Dr. Fritz Faulhaber company. Serial production of the electromagnetic motor is presently under way.

DARTS Underwater : Small autonomous underwater vehicles
http://www.irobot.com/rd/previous_darts.asp

The goal of the DARTs program was to develop a series of small autonomous underwater vehicles that emulate the efficiency, acceleration, and maneuverability of a fish. These biologically inspired robotic craft are equipped with a state of the art system of flexible, actuated hulls capable of producing the large burst of force needed for fish-like rapid acceleration and turning....more

SWARM : Distributed programming of autonomous robots
http://www.irobot.com/rd/research_swarm.asp

The goal of the Swarm project at IS Robotics is to develop techniques for programming a distributed group of autonomous robots. Programs for individual robots need to be robust in the face of complex environments, and the group software needs to be tolerant to the failure of any number of individuals. The algorithms developed must be designed to be completely scaleable, that is to function with groups of 10 or groups of 10,000....more

Sandia National Laboratories researcher Doug Adkins takes a close-up view of the mini-robots he and Ed Heller are developing. At 1/4 cubic inch and weighing less than an ounce, they are possibly the smallest autonomous untethered robots ever created....more

Engineers with a government national security laboratory have created what they think could be the world's smallest robot -- a brainy, mobile machine that can sit on a dime. Sporting track wheels and an 8K ROM processor, it could someday perform a host of arduous tasks like disabling land mines or searching for lost humans, scientists said.....more

NASA Space Telerobotics Program
http://ranier.oact.hq.nasa.gov/telerobotics_page/telerobotics.shtm

Notre Dame University : Micro Air Vehicles
http://www.nd.edu/~mav/index.html

Robotic Antarctic Meteorite Search
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/meteorobot/

His friends call him Nomad. He's part of a scientific team that's gone to the Antarctic to collect and study meteorites that have crashed down on the barren continent. But Nomad's task is unique. He'll be the lone explorer - the one chosen to brave the elements, the one to bare the entire responsibility of hand-picking the extra-terrestrial rocks according to their scientific value.

Okay, so it may not sound like brain surgery, but for guys like Nomad, it might as well be. You see, Nomad's not like the rest of us. He's a four-wheeled robot. But like people, Nomad is able to use advanced-thinking and decision-making. He'll use his new abilities to explore harsh regions looking for rocks, to tell whether they are meteorites, and then to classify and sort them. All without any human guidance.

RoboTuna
http://collegian.ksu.edu/issues/v099b/fa/n059/smat-robotuna-tomb.html

You've heard of 'Robocop' -- now meet 'Robotuna'
ANDREW TOMB, Collegian, Kansas State University

When engineers began casting around for a more efficient means of driving submarines, they spied on nature. And so, after three years of research, scientists have created an unmanned sub shaped like a fish. A bluefin tuna, to be precise. Robotuna, they call it....more

Consider the fish : highly maneuverable and an effortless swimmer, this animal 160 million years in the making is superbly adapted to its watery environs. Now, in work that could lead to mini submarines with similar attributes, MIT engineers have developed the first robotic version of Nature's piscine wonder....more

An MIT creation, the original robotuna, Charlie 1, was built and designed by David Barrett for his doctoral thesis to "produce a dynamic body motion that can realistically recreate the type of flow field that exist about and behind a swimming biological tuna" as part of the ongoing research in Autonomous Undersea Vehicles....more

Science Report Radio: Robotuna
http://www.aip.org/radio/html/robotuna.html

SmartDust
http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/SmartDust/

Smithsonian Magazine : RoboPike
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues00/aug00/robofish.html

UC Berkeley Robotics and Intelligent Machines Lab
http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/

Unmanned Vehicles : Shephard's Press
http://www.shephard.co.uk/pubs/unman/

Insect flight, micro and miniature air vehicles and robotics
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/legacy1.html

Nicola Tesla's 'Teleautomaton' of 1898 !
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/rpav_home.html#Radiodynamics

Reginald Denny's 'Radioplane' Target Drones of the 1930s and 40s
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/rpav_radioplane.html

Sydney University of Technology's 'Flying Wings' of the late 1940s
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/wings_su.html