Robot Companions For All Europeans?

 Robots

As part of the Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship initiative in the EU, Robot Companions for Citizens is being launched.  The program aims to give a robot.

A proposal is being put forward by the Robot Companions for Citizens (CA-RoboCom) consortium has the aim of giving a robot to every citizen in the European Union (EU).

According to their press release, this new generation of robots will extend the active independent lives of citizens, bolster the labour force,preserve and support human capabilities and experience, provide key services in our cities, and help us to maintain our planet.

The project is a Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagship Initiative.  The FET Flagship initiative RCC will realize a unique and unforeseen multidisciplinary science and engineering program supporting a radically new approach towards machines, and how we deploy them in our society.

The other FET Flagship candidate projects are:

• FuturICT - The FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator and Crisis-Relief System: Unleashing the Power of Information for a Sustainable Future
• Graphene - Graphene Science and technology for ICT and beyond
• Guardian Angels - Guardian Angels for a Smarter Planet
• HBP - The Human Brain Project
• ITFoM - IT Future of Medicine: a revolution in healthcare

These projects will be piloted over the next twelve months. There will be two selected projects that will be officially developed after the end of 2013.

Robot Companions for Citizens are going to be soft skinned and sentient machines designed to deliver assistance to people. This assistance is defined in the broadest possible sense and covers all sorts of different settings.

Based on multidisciplinary science and engineering, CA-RoboCom aims to develop a radically new approach towards machines and how these are deployed in society.

Robot Companions for Citizens will be based on the novel solid articulated structures with flexible properties displaying soft behaviour. These companions will also have new levels of perceptual, cognitive and emotive capabilities.

They will also be aware of their physical and social surroundings and respond accordingly. Such sentient characteristics will be achieved through understandings of the behaviour of sentient living creatures. In undertaking the research into the Information and Communication technologies that will need to be developed, the research will also validate understandings of the general design principles underlying biological bodies and brains, thus supporting a symbiotic relationship between science and engineering.

According to the organization:

Human society faces a critical challenge: how to increase and maintain our quality of life in the future. Robot Companions -as a new class of technology- will offer a variety of roles to assist facing this challenge.

In the video below, Dr. Paolo Dario, the CA-Robocom  Project Coordinator describes the ambitious European proposal.

SOURCE  Robot Companions for Citizens

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