Summary

Interest in climbing and walking robots (CLAWAR) has increased remarkably 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.), have been anticipated by great progress in this area of robotics. This book contains the proceedings of the 7th Climbing and Walking Robots 2004 (CLAWAR 2004) Conference, offering the international scientific community one of the most excellent forums for academics, researchers and industrialists interested in this motivating area of climbing and walking robots. It provides a wide forum of original state-of-the-art contributions from various industrial and new/emerging research fields, presenting a full picture of climbing and walking robots. The conference, held in Madrid, Spain, September 22-24 2004, was organized by the Thematic Network "CLAWAR 2" and funded by the European Commission under the GROWTH Program.