In this video lecture, IEEE Fellow Raja Chatila shares his views on why roboticists are duty-bound to educate the wider public on the state of advanced robotics , and also to understand the consequences of their own research and the potential commercialisation of it. 

Looking a specific examples of robots that have either already been or will soon be commercialized — including drones, UGVs in defence and security, robotic devices for rehabilitation and human augmentation, robot companions, robot personal assistants robots, sexual robots, and autonomous cars — Chatila explores the ethical, legal and societal issues of autonomous robot decisions, accountability, privacy and intrusion, dependance and isolation, cognitive and affective bonds, and the status of the robot in human society.

Credits: Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique

IEEE Fellow Raja Chatila is Director of Research at the French National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) and Director of the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR) at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.

His research covers robot navigation and SLAM, motion planning and control, cognitive and control architectures, human-robot interaction, and robot learning. He works on robotics projects in the areas of service, field, aerial and space robotics. He is author of over 140 international publications on these topics.

Chatila R. IJARS Video Series: On the Ethics of Research in Robotics [online video]. International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, 2015, 12:V9. DOI: 10.5772/61995

Tweets about #innorobo2015 #innorobo

Many governments have determined that robotics will play a significant role in contributing to their economy and have set up projects to fund bottlenecks to speed up the process.

Japan, the EU, France, the UK, and to a lesser extent, the US are all doing this.

Sebastian Cagnon, a French behavior architect at Aldebaran Robotics who blogs at About Robots, recapped the following governmental programs. I am excerpting and editing with his permission.

These last few months have seen so many announcements from countries investing in robotics with head spinning numbers, it gave me the idea to sum it all up in this post.

The wave started with the EU announcing a huge €2.8 billion investment program for the next 7 years. The EU Commission itself is investing €700M, and the rest is coming from the industry. The goal is to invest in every robotics sector, from industrial robots to domestic, from the fields to space, etc…

Another two announcements came from Japan: the announcement of Pepper by Softbank and Aldebaran (although not really a governmental funding project), and the Japanese government’s announcement that the future of Japan would depend on robots.

Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, announced on June 19th funding to make a “robot revolution.”  [You can see Sebastian at work with Pepper in the article’s news photo.] The funding sets up a task force to further develop Japan’s robot manufacturers and help them increase their revenues to $24 billion by 2020. In addition, Abe calls for a Robotics Olympics to be held at the same time as the 2020 Olympics being held in Japan.

Then came the British government on July 1st announcing RAS 2020. You can see here that they went big with the numbers, with $257M of investment planned for robotics! Their program’s focus is to create the conditions for a thriving robotics industry through a series of stimulating and support initiatives.

Next in line are the French. When we are not in strike, we make robots too! Our French Minister Arnaud Montebourg announced the creation of a private fund with €80M (~$108M) to invest in companies. The business minded robolutioner Bruno Bonnell is piloting the project. Robolution Capital plans to invest in companies and start-ups – even to front the early stages of development.

Before this rush of announcements, the US had announced in 2011 $500M invested in automation robots as part of a $2.2 billion Advanced Manufacturing Initiative, and Korea went for $316M in 2012!

But Korea just announced a new $2.7 billion plan in response to the American, Japanese and EU plans. Their new plan is to help existing robotics businesses increase their sales as well as investing in disaster recover and search and rescue robots and eldercare robots.

We are way past the MULTI-BILLION dollars in investments by now.

Thanks Sebastian.

Groupe Gorgé, via their subsidiary ECA S.A., has acquired French UAV copter provider Infotron for €2.5 million and 375,000 shares of ECA – a combined value of around $10 million. The acquisition supplements ECA’s line of unmanned underwater and aerial devices and systems with a proven line of mini helicopter-type vertical takeoff drones.

Infotron has patented their copter and sold over €2 million of them in 2013. They specialize in professional drones for military or civilian inspection, detection and identification applications, using a variety of detection systems.

Both ECA and Infotron serve the military/defense industry not only in France but throughout the world.

In a serious critique of French business practices, the International New York Times wrote about a brain drain from France – a migration of aspiring entrepreneurs feeling that they have to leave France to have a chance to get their ideas off the ground and into the marketplace. The Telegraph, from which this cartoon came, had a similar article: Down and out: the French flee a nation in despair.

One man who moved to London said:

“Things are different in France. There is a fear of failure. If you fail, it’s like the ultimate shame. In London, there’s this can-do attitude, and a sense that anything’s possible. If you make an error, you can get up again.”

French migration figures are up 60% in the last decade with top destinations being Hong Kong, New York, Silicon Valley and London. Many of those migrants are saying that they may not ever return because of French bureaucracy, high taxes, regulatory hurdles, excessive non-wage costs for employers, and social shame of failure. The latter is often punished by preventing people who have failed at one start-up from ever obtaining money for new projects.

“In Britain, you read about all the deals going on here. In the French papers, you read about taxes, more taxes, economic problems and the state’s involvement in everything.”

The recently successful IndieGoGo funding of EmoSPARK, an artificial intelligence home console by UK-based Emoshape, is another example. French CEO Patrick Rosenthal said Emoshape couldn’t have happened in France and that he was forced to move to London to get it started.

Yet in Lyon, France, things are a little less dreary. Two energetic women, the city government and a couple of ex game-software executives have cobbled together a consortium that seems to be working for (mostly) French service robotic innovators. Innorobo 2014, their creative annual trade show and conference, just concluded with a banner attendance, a strong exhibitor list, and an interesting group of innovators focused on stimulating and creating service robotics businesses.

Although the show was energetic and comprehensive — with an attentive crowd and lots of young people, and where one often saw people talking and doing business, nevertheless, the exhibitor list was heavily populated – 31% – with universities, research labs, venture-based support groups and governmental support agencies and not that many start-up companies. This seemingly helpful group of supporters could also be viewed as thwarting the development of independent entreprenurial energies.

Click on chart to enlarge.

Credit: Dessault Aviation, nEUROn 2012

On December 1st, the nEUROn, Europe’s unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) stealth technology demonstrator, successfully completed its maiden flight from the Dassault Aviation company’s flight test base in Istres, in collaboration with the flight test personnel of the French defense procurement agency (DGA). The a €405 million nEUROn was launched in 2005 with Dassault Aviation as prime contractor. The program was designed to pool the skills and know-how of Alenia Aermacchi (Italy), Saab (Sweden), EADS-CASA (Spain), HAI (Greece), RUAG (Switzerland) and Thales (France). It defines a future for the aeronautic excellence of Europe.

Read more