Robotics has the potential to be hugely beneficial to society, but is too important to leave to free-market capitalism.

Open science isn’t one thing – it is a set of practices that range from making sure your papers are openly accessible (which is relatively easy), to open notebook science, which makes the process open – and not just the results. Open notebook science is, of course, much more demanding.

We asked Alan Winfield what the first successful landing on a comet means for the future of space mining. Find out his answer below.

The issue is often raised whether robotics needs to be regulated. While some believe that there is no need to intervene because regulation may stifle innovation, others believe that indeed there is need to intervene since robotics may otherwise prove disruptive. However, both arguments are partial, and for this very reason wrong. Thanks to existing laws, a robot (like any other physical phenomenon) is already instantly regulated in the very moment materializes .

Tony Prescott, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Director of the Sheffield Center of Robotics believes that the medical industry could be at the forefront of changing the public perception of robotics. Why?  Because this is an industry that already understands how paramount it is, when dealing with the elderly, disabled and ill, to provide a service that is helpful, friendly and nonthreatening.

It may eventually be possible for a human to experience something approaching what it is like to be a robot.

We set out to experimentally test our robot with a consequence engine, and ended up building a minimally ethical robot which – remarkably – appears to implement Asimov’s first and third laws of robotics.

This is not what you might describe as a high-speed contest. The robots walk to take a kick or a tackle and, really, waddle might be a more apt word for their approach. But the game is far from boring …

For a couple of years I’ve been thinking about robots with internal models. Not internal models in the classical control-theory sense, but simulation-based models; robots with a simulation of themselves and their environment inside themselves, where that environment could contain other robots or, more generally, dynamic actors.

If you can tell me what feelings are, I’ll tell you whether a robot can have them or not.

Want to create human-equivalent AI? Well, broadly speaking, there are three approaches open to you: design it, reverse-engineer it or evolve it. The third of these – artificial evolution – is attractive because it sidesteps the troublesome problem of having to understand how human intelligence works.

Last week I attended the launch event for a new NESTA publication called Our work here is done: Visions of a Robot Economy.

Link to audio file (27:49)

In this episode Per Sjoborg speaks with Henrik Schunk about his company’s work in gripping technology, modular robotics and dexterous manipulation. They then look at service robotics, which was the focus of the SCHUNK Expert Days in Hausen, Germany.

The continuing interest of Google in robotics over the last years and its newest activities in this regard confirms what all players active in robotics will confirm: service robotics is on the threshold of entering a new maturity level. Service robotics conquers new, commercial fields of application and is just becoming an independent industrial sector.