The floor cleaning robot HECTOR is a robot specifically designed and optimised for the 1^st International Cleaning Robot Contest carried out at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems - IROS 2002 (30.9. - 4.10.2002, Lausanne, Switzerland) where HECTOR reached the fourth place. Its top design goals were to be implemented by a small team of students in a short time and, of course, to show competitive cleaning results for any kind of (dry) dirt as well. HECTOR hence should clean faster (and hopefully better) than a good housewife or houseman. It hence has a maximum speed of 0.8 m/s. But normally it is operated at a lower speed.

HECTOR uses vacuuming as its cleaning principle. In order to achieve optimal cleaning results even at a competitive high speed, HECTOR features a high blower power of up to 1000 W. Hence a large accumulator-set is needed which makes the robot fairly heavy, i.e. 17 kg. This had a strong impact on the design and size of the machine. The (mechanical) design thus differs significantly from a design we would have chosen for cleaning a home environment. Nevertheless, the complete control system, i.e. sensors, electronics and software, is designed to be close to a floor cleaning robot operated in a normal home environment.

The window cleaning robot WICTOR was specifically designed for the 1^st Cleaning Robot Contest carried out at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems - IROS 2002 (30.9. - 4.10.2002, Lausanne, Switzerland). It also had to be implemented by a small team of students in a short time. The top design goals thus were simplicity and a robust operation. I.e., WICTOR should never fall from a window. Hence it uses no suction principle, but a tethered mode of locomotion. Another goal was its capability to clean large windows with a size of many square meters without needing any maintenance. Because time needed for designing and building the robot was a very critical issue, WICTOR´s construction is very simple. Additionally no position estimation is used (also in order to minimize costs). At present WICTOR is nothing but a functional prototype. Nevertheless, locomotion and cleaning principle were granted a patent meanwhile. And WICTOR was the lucky winner of window cleaning contest.

WICTOR consists of two units, a cleaning unit and a locomotion unit. The cleaning unit is moved horizontally and vertically along the window surface by the locomotion unit. The locomotion unit itself moves along the upper side of the window frame. Due to the current state of the project, a separate slide rail is mounted therefore on top of the window frame which guides the locomotion unit. It is assumed that the window frame finally will contain a guiding rail by default.

FALCO employs the inverse hovercraft principle to adhere the wall and is propelled by a two-wheeled differential drive. It was built within a student´s project for the CLAWAR Climbing Robot Student Competition at the 4^th International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots - CLAWAR2001. Here it achieved the highest autonomy and climbing speed of all competitors. At the Climbing Contest of the 1^st CLAWAR/EURON Workshop on Robots in Entertainment, Leisure, and Hobby, Vienna, Austria, Dec. 2004, it made the 2^nd place and the 3^rd place at the CLAWAR Climbing Robot Student Competition which took place at 7^th International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots - CLAWAR2004, Madrid, Spain, Sept. 2004.

ALFRED is a member of the FRED-family of walking robots (see also FRED II and Flat Freddy). It was built within a student´s project for the CLAWAR Climbing Robot Student Competition at the 4^th International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots - CLAWAR2001. It made 1^st place at the Climbing Contest which took place at the 1^st CLAWAR/EURON Workshop on Robots in Entertainment, Leisure, and Hobby, Vienna, Austria, Dec. 2004.

The climbing robot DEXTER is a climbing robot which adheres to the wall by passive suction cups. Hence only electric energy is needed. It has four degrees of freedom, allowing the transition from ground to wall, from wall to ceiling or to another wall.

FRED II ^[1] is the first prototype of a family of pneumatically actuated walking machines for missions in a harsh outdoor environment. It is capable of crossing rough terrain with an unevenness of up to 20 cm without tilting. According to the FRED-family (Flexibly Running Experimental Device), it features a sliding frame construction and has 10 degrees of freedom which allow omni-directional movements. Due to its mechanical concept, a (static) stable gait is guaranteed for any phase of a walking move. It is hence an ideal platform to study different control system principles and implementations with different degrees of accuracy without sacrificing stability.

Flat Freddy ^[1] is a walking machine which was intended as a forerunner for a wall-climbing machine on one the hand. On the other hand it was built primarily as an example for interdisciplinary systems design in student education and features hence a rather simple, but very robust design. Flat Freddy belongs to walking machines with a fairly large payload.