The dominant question which has occupied us in the robotics and automation group is "Where are the all the robots?"

In the 70's and 80's there were forecasts which predicted a huge growth in robot numbers, yet these predictions have not come true. Why not? Perhaps robots are too expensive, too complicated or unsuited to the tasks we imagined they could perform. Research has shown that robots can walk and run, can shear sheep, play table-tennis, juggle drive trucks at high speed and fly in space. Yet the automotive industry is still the only one where robots proliferate. Our aim is to explore this question and we have come up with some interesting ideas as a result.

Simple robots which behave predictably may be useful in the long term than some of the cumbersome creations emerging from typical robotics research labs.

The robotics and automation group is one of the smallest, yet one of the best known in the world. We are known both for exciting and original ideas and solid working achievements in research. Associate Professor James Trevelyan, who leads the group, gained wide international recognition for demonstrating sheep shearing robots. More recently, Ken Taylor connected our ABB robot to the World Wide Web internet service for his PhD research. This was the first 6-axis industrial robot to be made available to internet users. With over 500,000 users (estimated) from around the globe, this has become one of the world's best known robots. Aooc. Prof. Karol Miller helped to design the control system for the world's fastest robot (Delta) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is building a new type of Delta robot here at the University of WA and a robot for brain surgery inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine.