If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractMiniaturised nanohandling microrobots are used to handle objects of less than 100 mm size with accuracy down to several nanometres. Operating a nanohandling robot in the microworld and nanoworld presents challenges not found in the macroworld. To allow a good manipulability, we propose a teleoperation system, which is based on the innovative approach of haptic-based model-oriented teleoperation of nanohandling robots. The newly developed haptic interface for a microrobot cell is used in the proposed teleoperation system for the teleoperation of the industrial nanohandling robot. This paper presents the scanning electron microscope based nanohandling station that uses the proposed hapticbased model-oriented teleoperation approach. Further, we discuss the integration of a force microsensor into the teleoperation interface. The first experiments and theoretical research show that the proposed approach can improve haptic-based teleoperation of nanohandling robots. Electronic access

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Flexibility, throughput, maintainability, scalability, reliability and low cost: That are the main optimization criteria of material flow systems (MFS). The most of this criteria are diametrical and so hardly to improve considerably with today's existing transportation devices and their static control structures. Hence a new approach of a transportation systems with cooperating robotic units and a novel cognitive environment will be presented. This approach will combine different research areas like robotics and wireless sensor networks to achieve a higher degree of flexibility.