Europe’s roadmap for robotics released its latest version on 2 December. The MAR is updated annually as priorities, technologies and strategic developments shape European research development and innovation. This version of the MAR relates to the Horizon 2020 robotics work programme defined for the 2017 call in ICT25, ICT 27 & ICT-28.

If you liked this article, you may want to also read more about Horizon 2020:

• Horizon 2020 earmarks € 98M for new wave of European robotics
• Robohub Focus on European Robotics
• #ERF2016 webcam: Horizon2020 project pitches
• 2 agricultural robotics projects funded under latest Horizon 2020
• EU’s Horizon 2020 has funded $179 million in robotics PPPs

Horizon 2020 projects on Robohub

• Future robots will learn through curiosity and self-generated goals
• XoSoft: Intelligent trousers designed to assist people with limited mobility
• Surveying flooded mines with UNEXMIN: Interview with Norbert Zajzon
• Space for the masses as helium balloons and remote control planes reach through the stratosphere

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

In our final interview in The Robot Economy series, we speak with Mady Delvaux, Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and Chair of the Working Group on robotics. Mady has written an extensive draft report “Civil Law Rules on Robotics,” and proposes the creation of a legal framework for automation and ways to promote European industry.

How do you think robots will impact the economy?

I believe that robots will impact the economy positively because it will allow us to be more competitive. I would like European industry to be strong, and to continue to produce in Europe rather than delocalise. I believe robots could be instrumental in bringing industry back to Europe. You always need innovation, innovation is positive for Europe, and there are so many synergies between different sectors of European industry.

It’s my first mandate as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP). The European Parliament can propose laws through reports provided to the European Commission, which is then able to legislate.

I’m a member of the committee on Legal Affairs, and decided to lobby colleagues to set up a working group on robotics. I chaired the committee, which brought together members from every political party, and members from other committees on employment, civil liberties, and industry. We also invited experts, that’s one of the nice things about being an MEP, you identify people you would like to talk to, and they are happy to join! We had monthly working group meetings which resulted in a report.

The report looks at how we can promote European industry, while emphasizing robots that are friendly to humans. We need a high standard for robots in terms of safety and security. There are also many issues around liability and legislation which are not yet urgent, but may be in 10-15 years. And then there is the “jobs discussion” we read about in the media. The reality is that no one really knows what the impact will be. We’ve asked the European Commission to closely monitor the employment market, so that we can know what jobs are taken over, and which jobs aren’t. If robots do destroy jobs, then we need to think about how to finance the social systems. This could be through a tax on robots, perhaps to insure a Basic Universal Income. Industry is alarmed, but we should at least think about this. The goal is really to be prepared in case this displacement does happen. Another issue is privacy, robots typically only work if they are connected, and then the question is who owns the data, and who has access to it.

What are some of the recommendations from the report?

We asked the European Commission to put up a register that defines categories for robots and keeps track of them, what they do, and where they are. We already do this with cars for example.

On ethics, we suggested the creation of Research Ethics Committees (REC) in universities to think of the ethical aspects of the work they are doing. In the health sector, prosthetics and implants, raise questions around the enhancement of human capabilities. There is also a question about equality, who has access to robot technology, who will pay for it, and how can knowledge be evenly distributed?

What are some of the positive aspects highlighted?

Robots can facilitate the life of people. Technology is usually developed to make life easier, but there is always a bright side, and a dark side. We need a responsible way to interact with robots. Interactions will be more complex in all sectors, for example in agriculture, health, elder care, or education. Robots could be an excellent tool for teachers, but there are other domains where robots shouldn’t be used. Many worry about the human aspect. But there may also be a danger with the development of android robots, that could be confused with humans. Robots shouldn’t be confusing. I personally believe in having a human in the loop.

Has your view about robotics changed since you’ve started working on the report?

I didn’t know anything about robots, and I don’t like science fiction. I’ve learned a lot through the making of this report, and it has completely changed my view. At the start I was a bit sceptical, I am now more friendly to the technology.

How should we communicate about robotics?

We should use all channels, and simple messages. Robots have strongly reduced the number of accidents in the oil and gas industry, why don’t we say it! These should be the headlines.

What can we expect next with the report?

Committees are working on the draft report to provide their opinion, the deadline for feedback is end of October. I hope that we will then have a procedure committee, followed by a plenary two months later. Overall, I hope we will have a vote in the European Parliament in January. The European Commission would then receive the report, and decide to accept the recommendations.

This is the final article in a series of three interviews about the robot economy. Read part one here and part two here.

Read the previous articles in the European Robotics series here.

This series is published on the SPARC website and Robohub. Funding for the series was provided by RockEU – a Coordination and Support Action funded under FP7 by the European Commission, Grant Agreement Number 611247.

In today’s interview, we sat down with Alan Manning, Professor of Labour Economics at the London School of Economics. He is a leading author in his field, particularly in understanding the imperfections of labour markets.

How do you think robots will impact the economy?

Like any new technology, there will be winners and losers. On the whole, however, I believe there will be more winners.

Who will the winners be?

The winners will mostly be two groups: First robots will be used by firms to make production cheaper, which will in turn lower prices, and benefit the consumer. Second, because consumers are getting products cheaper, they will have more money to spend, which will boost the economy as a whole.

There have been discussions about robotics increasing inequality, and a tax on automation as a way to counter this. What do you think?

Don’t tax automation, let automation happen and then correct its effects. Redistribution of wealth should be done amongst the workers by taxing high wage workers more, and redistributing these earnings to low-wage workers. Overall, I don’t think robots will necessarily raise inequality but if it does, we have well-established ways to respond to that.

Are there differences in the way Europe, the US, Japan or China perceive the robot economy?

There has been a very long history of people worrying about new technology lowering wages and bringing upon the end of work. I think those fears are exaggerated.

Perception is broadly similar across the different regions – but problems in the labour market are slightly different from one country to the other. In the US they worry about stagnation and a jobless recovery. In the UK, we haven’t had stagnation, but we worry about the quality of jobs and the lowering of living standards. In Europe, the worry is about joblessness. Right now there is a tendency to blame robots for all of these problems, and it plays into the general lack of optimism.

Could robots be a solution to the perceived slouch in the economy?

More investment in modern technology, including robotics, would help increase productivity. Historically, rising productivity has improved everyone’s living standards. If optimism about the opportunities that new technology offers could suffuse the economy that would do something to off-set the pessimism that has taken hold.

Yet the media are constantly reporting on the high percentage of jobs that may be “replaced” by robots. Do you have a number to give us?

If I had to give a number, I would say that the impact of new technology on jobs is zero. Meaning that the net percentage of people employed will stay the same overall.

Numbers reported on in mainstream media are often misinterpreted as being predictions, the simplistic conclusion is read as “40 % of jobs will disappear”. I don’t think that’s the right interpretation even if 40% of occupations are affected by robots. The main problem is that this approach looks directly at specific jobs that are affected instead of looking at jobs overall. It is clear that there will be occupations where opportunities will fall because of robots. Other opportunities will also be created due to an increase in spending power. These will not necessarily be new jobs, just more old jobs as consumers spend the extra spending money that comes from the falling prices caused by new technology.

What should we be thinking about regarding regulation to make the most of the robot economy?

One issue is whether people will feel comfortable having a job a done by a robot, that was previously done by a human. Will they be happy with autonomous cars, or autonomous doctors? Regulation can ensure that technology is really better at these tasks before they are deployed, and can help reassure those who show resistance to the technology.

Another issue is intellectual property (IP). Robotics is the source of new knowledge, knowledge can be spread freely across everyone. However, if we are aggressive with IP, we will limit the extent of use of this technology, which would reduce competition in the market. It would help to think a bit more about the consequences of our IP laws and how they are going to help.

Ideally, we would want to have as many people as possible who can understand, have access to, and use this technology. Obviously, you have to strike a balance by providing incentives to motivate people to improve knowledge, but without allowing them to entirely keep that knowledge for themselves.

This is the second in a series of three interviews about the robot economy. Read part one, here.

Read the previous articles in the European Robotics series here.

This series is published on the SPARC website and Robohub. Funding for the series was provided by RockEU – a Coordination and Support Action funded under FP7 by the European Commission, Grant Agreement Number 611247.

How do you think robots will impact the economy?

Positively for sure. But the debate around robots and jobs is too polarized. People seem to pick sides, either believing “robots are going to take all our jobs”, or “it’s all going to be fine – far more new jobs will be created than old ones lost”. My view is that there is no single answer. The extent to which robots replace jobs depends on the specific robot and the job. You need to unpick the context on a case-by-case basis. It’s quite a nuanced question. As a result, it’s very hard to figure out how this will average out in terms of net number of jobs gained or lost.

Do you have concrete examples of where robots might impact the job market?

My bigger worry is AI, rather than physical robots. Knowledge workers (lawyers, call centre workers, translators, data analysts, etc) are more at risk from AI than physical workers are from robots. A robot is a much more difficult technology to mature and deploy. And in almost every situation where we think robots might be useful, we find that what we really need are collaborative robots that work alongside humans. That’s because most physical jobs that we do cannot be fully automated. The jobs that can be fully automated, for example assembly line manufacturing, have been already.

We should also be thinking about which areas are right for automation. Warehouses and logistics are one area where robots are already making big inroads. We’re seeing examples with Kiva and Amazon, but there is still a long way to go. Of course, these are often low-wage jobs with zero hours contracts and are physically demanding. I can also see robotics having a huge impact in the area of precision-agriculture, crop picking and harvesting. At the same time, we do not want people to be left out of work.

How can we help people through the transition should they lose their job?

I think there may be a case for an automation or redeployment tax. Companies who automate and hence lay off large numbers of low-paid workers have a duty to those workers. If companies don’t voluntarily – and generously – help those individuals through redeployment or training, then the government should step in. The last resort could be a special tax.

There has been a lot of discussion about driverless cars and their impact on the economy, what do you think?

It is going to take a lot of time before we see driverless cars and trucks on the roads, the technology is not ready. It comes back to this essential problem of whether the car requires human assistance or is fully autonomous. The recent fatal accident with a Tesla car tragically showed that it’s a very bad idea to require a human in the loop. If you have nothing to do then it’s very difficult to maintain full attention on the road, so the idea that the driver can immediately snap back and resume control is crazy; this is an unsolved problem. The Tesla accident also illustrated that robot perception is not good enough, there are lots of situations on streets and highways where the robot will be blind to what’s going on because of weaknesses in sensing and cognition.

What positive impact will robots have on the economy?

In the near term, robots will create opportunities for new types of jobs. The lesson of the last 20 years of the digital society is that it’s very hard to anticipate what these jobs will be. If we had sat down and had this conversation about the Internet in 1996, I doubt we would have predicted 10% of the IT related jobs that exist today. The point is that new technology generates new ways of being creative. We will obviously need more people to maintain robots, but there will also be a new range of businesses and entrepreneurial activities. We’re already seeing this in our incubator. Think about Open Bionics who 3D print prosthetics. Who would have thought robotics could be used in this way! As the technology improves, there is a wonderful scope for wearable robotics. And it’s not just people who’ve lost limbs, wearables could benefit the elderly, and disabled too. I really hope wheelchairs will be a thing of the past.

In the long term, it’s important that wealth creation brought about through robotics is shared by all. A Universal Basic Income is the only logical solution. Ultimately, and I’m talking a hundred or so years into the future, wouldn’t it be great to live in a post-scarcity society where essentially all of the work that most humans don’t want to do is done by robots. We should look forward to a future where there are no demeaning, physically or mentally debilitating jobs. This would leave time to do sports, arts, write books, do science. My “robotopia” is a kind of Star Trek society where work is essentially a voluntary activity. Robotics could enable that, but only if wealth creation is shared with all in society. We desperately need to ensure that the wealth is not captured exclusively by the companies who own the robots, and the 0.1% who own those companies. If we fail to do this, we risk increasing poverty and inequality. What’s the point of robots making things if people can’t afford to buy them?

There is a lot of misinformation about the robot economy, how can we improve the public discourse?

We need to make the point that there is a difference between AI (the software kind) and physical robots. Both are often confused in the public discourse.

Furthermore, it’s all about nuance. We’re not talking about robots replacing jobs, but about robots performing tasks. A lot of jobs have components that a robot can’t do, the classical example is the elder care worker. If you ask people, “would you like to see robots in care homes?”, they tend to say no. But if you ask a different question, for example, if they would like a robot to support someone with personal hygiene, then you get a different answer. People think it would be wonderful as it restores dignity. In my mind, the benefit of robots in a care home is that they free up human workers to provide the human touch, spend time in a conversation, for example. When I talk to care workers, they love the human contact and hate the routine tasks of managing people’s physical needs, which take time away from sitting down and having a chat. It’s a wonderful example where the right kind of division of labour can be actually very positive, both for the service users, and caregivers.

Who should decide what applications of robotics are beneficial for the economy?

The whole of society needs to have a say in this – there needs to be a conversation. This is already happening through the Eurobarometer survey and the many public engagement events around Europe. In addition, I think there needs to be some kind of body whose job it is to worry about this. It could be a Royal Commission, or an EU body, which seeks advice from society at large to build an understanding of how ordinary people respond to these questions – when presented with the nuanced story, not the black and white one presented by the media. Companies have a stake in this. At the end of the day, what they do needs to be accepted by society at large and should be reflected in standards and regulation. In fact, a new set of ethical guidelines were recently published by the British Standards Institute: “BS8611: Robots and robotic devices. Guide to the ethical design and application of robots and robotic systems“.

If a company wants to be successful, they should aim to get the “stamp” saying that their robot conforms with the relevant standards. Regulation is a shorthand way for the government to reassure us. Public trust in robots will come about through both regulation and public engagement. Why do we trust commercial airliners? It’s a highly regulated industry with very tough standards and robust protocols for investigating accidents. The lessons from commercial aircraft should be transferred to robotics. Tesla is an example of the need for regulation. As far as we know there are no published standards against which their Autopilot has been formally validated – and until there are – it cannot be trusted.

This is the first in a series of three interviews about the robot economy.

Read the previous articles in the European Robotics series here.

This series is published on the SPARC website and Robohub. Funding for the series was provided by RockEU – a Coordination and Support Action funded under FP7 by the European Commission, Grant Agreement Number 611247.

Credit: Cybatholon

44 million people aged between 15 and 64 report a basic activity difficulty, with the most prominent disabilities centered around lifting and carrying, walking, bending, sitting or standing. Strokes alone touch 1.1 million Europeans each year, often resulting in a loss of upper- or lower-limb mobility. Helping the young and old regain mobility is therefore a top priority with important social and economic impact.

Exoskeletons, as the name indicates, are external support systems for the body. As a first step, they provide assistance for professionals in rehabilitation centres by physically supporting patients and guiding them through exercise sessions. Their use helps avoid challenging ergonomics for the therapists, and provides valuable data and control of motion for the patients. Swiss-based company Hocoma is a leader in a field, having deployed its Lokomat robotic treadmill in 2001 after years of research at Balgrist University Hospital in Zurich. The robot is used to train patients with movement disorders caused by stroke, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, multiple sclerosis, or Parkinson’s disease. The system consists of a body-weight support system which helps patients support their full weight, a treadmill, braces around the legs for guidance and actuation of movement, and a virtual reality system to provide feedback. The company has since branched out to tackle low-back pain therapy, as well as arm and hand therapy.

A new spin-off of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Aura Innovative Robotics, instead aims to provide assistance in the rehabilitation of patients suffering shoulder injury. Their exoskeleton Orte, will help assess the extent of the injury and perform rehabilitation exercises through an array of motion and strength sensors.

Co-founder Cecilia Carcia Cena tells us “thanks to a sophisticated musculoskeletal model of the arm, the practitioner can evaluate the condition of the patient, gaining valuable insight for the diagnosis process, and then create a customized rehabilitation routine for each patient that will be guided by the robot, monitoring progress during execution.”

Beyond specialized centers, the dream is to see exoskeletons available for daily use in the home. As outlined in the MIRAD project, this causes challenges related to safety, wearability, energy autonomy, intelligent dynamic interaction with the human, and psychological aspects. The project aims to design a bilateral active lower-limb exoskeleton to assist people with functional weakness. Their exoskeleton designed to help people get up from a sitting position was recently tested in research trials at KU Leuven with healthy participants aged 65 and above.

Walking is the next frontier in the SYMBITRON project, which stands for “Symbiotic man-machine interactions in wearable exoskeletons to enhance mobility for paraplegics”. The goal is to develop a safe, bio-inspired, personalized wearable exoskeleton that enables spinal cord injury patients to walk without additional assistance, by complementing their remaining motor function. Their Mindwalker exoskeleton was demonstrated in the laboratory on 6 volunteers with spinal cord injury. One goal of the project was to explore the use of a dry, lightweight, wearable EEG cap to read brainwaves that control the motion of the exoskeleton. A virtual reality training environment was used to help the patients generate the correct brain signals.

“New exoskeleton functions are continuously being explored and added, such as autonomous operation, balance support capacities, and collaborative controlled operation. Such research is receiving important funding from the European Commission, through projects such as BALANCE or SYMBITRON”, says Dr. Jan Veneman, Tecnalia Research and Innovation, and project coordinator of the BALANCE research project. “After the FDA approval of some autonomous exoskeletons for home use in 2016, the market is starting to see exoskeletons as a reality instead of as science fiction. This has greatly boosted the interest from different market segments for exoskeleton technology and other wearable robots”.

And these exoskeletons come in many shapes and materials. Cybatholon, the first championship for athletes with disabilities on 8 October 2016 at ETH Zurich Olympics will see at least 11 teams battle it out in a powered exoskeleton race. In fact, a current trend has been to move away from bulky structures to make soft exoskeletons that feel more like a pair of trousers than a machine made of bolts and metal. Although this doesn’t allow for full powering of walking, it may help give an extra boost to those with weaknesses. In particular, it’s being seen as a way to help the silver generation remain independent through increased mobility. Bionic power trousers are being developed as part of a major collaboration in the UK between the Universities of Bristol, Leeds, Nottingham, Southampton, Strathclyde, Loughborough, and the West of England. The University of Salford has a soft exoskeleton for the hand, which looks like a smart glove driven by pneumatics muscles.

The WALL-X exoskeleton developed by Ghent University shows what a minimal exoskeleton might look like with a simple pneumatically powered system that assists ankle push-off, thus making walking easier. Whatever the solution adopted, it’s important to understand the interactions between the human body and the exoskeleton. Danish company AnyBody is helping with their sophisticated simulations of the human body.

Exoskeletons are also seen as a way to improve working conditions for jobs that are ergonomically challenging. “Low-back pain is the leading cause of worker absenteeism after the common cold, accounting for 15% of sick leaves and hundreds of millions of lost work days annually”. The Spexor Spinal exoskeleton aims to prevent low-back pain and improve job reintegration for those suffering from injuries. Unlike most exoskeletons that focus on upper- and lower-limb mobility, this robot focusses on the spinal cord. The project started in January of 2016, so it’s still in the early days of development.

Seeing this opportunity, Swiss startup Noonee is in the business of improving working conditions with their “Chairolution”. “The Chairless Chair is a wearable sitting exoskeleton for people working on construction lines that is designed to allow movement while still providing enough support to prevent the repetitive stress and health problems that are so common in this kind of work.” The exoskeleton was tested with German car manufacturer Audi last year.

Another exoskeleton being tested in the automotive industry is the ABLE upper-limb exoskeleton used at the PSA Peugeot Citroen factories and now commercialised by Haption. The robot was developed by the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) to compensate arm and tools loads. The team behind ABLE also demonstrated a lower-limb exoskeleton at Innorobo this year commercialised by the company RB3D.

Finally, exoskeletons are being used to intuitively guide remotely operated robotic arms in extreme environments. The X-Arm-2 Exoskeleton master device was design by the European Space agency to control an ergonomic, fully-actuated haptic robot. Force feedback from the robot is then provided to the operator to improve control. Such setups are being considered for robotic surgery, or nuclear applications where fine precise motor control is required.

Overall, the aim is not to develop super-human capabilities, but to provide mobility for those who need it, improve challenging working conditions, and empower new applications in teleoperation. There are still many challenges ahead as we improve our understanding of basic biomechanics, human-robot interfaces, and the control of such complex systems.

Read the previous articles in the series here.

The ten-part series on European Robotics is published regularly on the SPARC website and Robohub. Funding for the series was provided by RockEU – a Coordination and Support Action funded under FP7 by the European Commission, Grant Agreement Number 611247.

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Image: Messe München International

Industry 4.0 – the fourth industrial revolution – was the main theme at the largest robot and automation fair in the world, Germany’s AUTOMATICA, which took place in Munich throughout the last week of June. But what exactly is Industry 4.0 and how do developers and manufacturers big and small believe it will revolutionise production?

The signs and banners were everywhere throughout the gigantic conference arena: “The heart of Industry 4.0”, “Welcome to the 4th industrial revolution” and “Hello Industry 4.0, we go digital!”, trumpeted by leading German robotics supplier, KUKA. SMErobotics, the European Robotics initiative for strengthening the competitiveness of SMEs in manufacturing was also showcasing results from their 4.5-year project.

Industry 4.0, the next phase in the digitisation of the manufacturing sector, is predicted to drive up manufacturing’s share of GDP in Europe by 20 percent over the next five years. Consultants McKinsey say it is “driven by four disruptions: the astonishing rise in data volumes, computational power and connectivity, especially new low-power wide-area networks; the emergence of analytics and business-intelligence capabilities; new forms of human-machine interaction such as touch interfaces and augmented-reality systems; and improvements in transferring digital instructions to the physical world, such as advanced robotics and 3D printing.”

The coming changes are set to result in a host of new opportunities, say Industry 4.0  enthusiasts such as KUKA, which enticed the public onto its exhibition space with the showstopping Paulii Brothers – a pair of LBR robots perfecting, jointly, the fine art of pouring a German wheat beer. But the company’s massive orange-hued demonstration area also featured a smaller exhibit, a screen showing every one of the dozens of networked KUKA robots at AUTOMATICA, with the possibility of pulling down data on rate of operation, speed and more.

“KUKA is not just about robots,” Wolfgang Meisen, the company’s Head of Communications, pointed out. “It’s also an application provider and systems provider, with full automation assistance. The robot is one of the key elements.

Industry 4.0 is about more flexible production, processes and interconnection – machines, systems, software and devices working together. The robot is the junction between the digitalisation of the software and the mechanics.”

Experts believe that within two years the first wave of factories using smart technology will be fully operational, with widespread adoption throughout the world in the next decade. So the big manufacturers were out in force at AUTOMATICA, gearing up for what they see as the a major push for their products.

With an appearance by German goalie Jens Lehmann on its stand, clamping and gripping systems manufacturer Schunk, was clearly hoping for an additional push. But when in comes to Industry 4.0, the company believes the goal is “connectivity.” General Manager, Tomas Berg demonstrated this by comparing parallel exhibits. On the left, a scissor equipped pneumatic gripper and, on the right, a sensor studded version with all the corresponding connectivity on offer, such as putting output data on screen to inspect rate and speed and to highlight any broken links in the production line.

The key attraction, said Mr Berg, is the ability to deliver more productivity through the flexibility of being easily able to change production lines. Thus removing the need for multiple lines of production.

Industry 5.0 already?

Flexibility is also at the core of the approach taken by leading collaborative robot (cobot) manufacturer Universal Robots. Not satisfied with the promise of Industry 4.0, it wants to take things further, according to Regional Sales Director Per Kloster Pollster:

“We see a big future when we can start analysing all that information and that will increase the development of products and optimisation of production. We are talking the fifth industrial revolution already. When that happens, the automation business will change a lot because the next big thing will be flexibility.”

Collaborative robots, he maintains, make it so much easier to quickly and simply push though the development of products and deliver that flexibility. Universal’s strategy continues to rest on the enabling power of collaborative robotics which, they stress, offer the lowest return on investment, with no need for extra software or safety glass; the robot is used with ultimate simplicity, as a tool.

Image: Messe München International

Some were disappointed that Universal, arguably the stars of Automatica two years ago, were not launching any new products. Their range still consists of the UR robot in three different sizes, with a focus on selling out of the box. Instead, the Danish company is expanding the service it offers customers and developers with the free-to-use Universal Robots Academy, an e-learning facility, as well as Universal Robots Plus. Mr. Pollster described this as a robotics version of the App store, opening up the company’s products to developers.

Universal’s success is indicative of a trend toward smaller and lighter robots for pick-and-place applications, small-part assembly, machine tending, material handling and logistics.

And where two years ago the Messe Munchen arena was packed with caged robots, their liberated successors were out in force in 2016, inspecting parts and lifting cars but also making coffee and pouring beer.

In fact, the biggest launch at the fair was by Italian manufacturer Comau, which was showcasing the world’s first high payload collaborative robot, capable of lifting 110 kilograms.

The success of the collaborative formula is demonstrated by figures from the German automotive industry, unveiled at AUTOMATICA: the number of robots rose by 17% between 2010 and 2015, while the number of employees increased by 13%. Evidence that man can co-exist very effectively with machine, providing employment for both.

The belief at AUTOMATICA is that the potential of collaborative robots is so huge that we’re now just scratching the surface. Key to enabling the delivery of real time contextual knowledge to the enterprise, they pave the way toward hybrid factories with humans, robots and cobots – the future of manufacturing and Industry 4.0.

Acceptability and standardisation

British startup the Shadow Robot Company is also gearing up for Industry 4.0. “As the flexibility of manufacturing processes increases, the need for more general purpose automation also increases,” said the company CEO Rich Walker. “At present, humans step in to provide this flexibility. But highly flexible grippers derived from dexterous hands will allow Industry 4.0 systems to handle far broader ranges of parts and components than more traditional fixed automation.”

But if people think robots will replace them, persuading them to accept robotic solutions is one of the challenges for Industry 4.0, believes Maxime Banon, Business Analyst with Spanish startup PAL Robotics.

Several of the company’s award winning robots were in attendance at AUTOMATICA, including TIAGo, a flexible, configurable robot to assist people in repetitive, dangerous or annoying tasks, including light industry.

But just as challenging to achieve as acceptability is standardisation, says KUKA’s Wolfgang Meison. “If we want interconnection, that means solving the challenge of connecting systems that may be programmed in different languages, with different software platforms and communication standards. We need interface solutions and that means a broad alliance to establish new standards for real-time communications. We’re still not there yet and it’s why Industry 4.0 can’t be solved by a single provider. We need a model that we can push forward together.”

Altogether, German manufacturers have pledged €40bn a year to help support new smart factory initiatives, and €200m of state funds has been earmarked for specific areas like human-to-machine interaction and cyber physical production systems within Industry 4.0.

With manufacturing contributing 22 percent to Germany economy, their interest in Industry 4.0 is understandable. But worldwide, the phrase is a relatively unfamiliar one. Six in 10 UK manufacturing managers have never even heard of Industry 4.0 according to a recent poll.

Mike Fair, Application Sales Manager at Rethink Robotics, says that in the US, more commonly used buzzwords include agile, efficient systems and the Industrial Internet of Things. The company was one of the first to market collaborative technology and their current model, Sawyer, is still the only widely available robot that makes use of an expressive interface. The robot has eyes which look to where it is working and which frown to indicate that parts can’t be found. In his presentation at AUTOMATICA’s Forum, the company’s  Director of Sales for Manufacturing Solutions, Chris Harbert, said that research had shown that this was significant for people. “It gave comfort,” he said. “Emotion is important.”

Nestled in among the believers in Industry 4.0, there is also a caveat, that a slogan such as Industry 4.0 is not enough. In the words of Comau CEO Mauro Fenzi: “It’s a good framework for the industry to use in automating factories, but now we need to fill the empty box with good ideas to benefit customers.”

A step change is needed before robotics reaches its full potential, says Andrew Graham Technical Director of British startup OC Robotics. He issued a warning call to anyone believing that Industry 4.0 would herald the turning point in the robotics and automation marketplace: “The huge market is the consumer one. Perception and cognition are particular challenges, together with the interpretation of all that data. We need to get to the point where we don’t need technologists to work with the robots; the point where my Mum can get more out of it.”

Additional videos and materials are available on the AUTOMATICA website.

Read the previous article in the series here.

The ten-part series on European Robotics will be published every two weeks on the SPARC website and Robohub. Funding for the series was provided by RockEU – a Coordination and Support Action funded under FP7 by the European Commission, Grant Agreement Number 611247.

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Cross section of underground tunnel showing miners at work with mining equipment.

Workers have long confronted dangerous and dirty jobs. They’ve had to dig to the bottom of mines, or put themselves in harm’s way to decommission ageing nuclear sites. It’s time to make these jobs safer and more efficient, robots are just starting to provide the necessary tools.

Mining

Mining has become much safer, yet workers continue to die every year in accidents across Europe, highlighting the perils of this genuinely needed industry. Everyday products use minerals extracted from mining, and 30 million jobs in the EU depend on their supply. Robots are a way to modernise an industry that is constantly under pressure with the fall in prices of commodities and the lack of safe access to hard-to-reach resources. Making mining greener is also a key concern.

The vision is for people to move away from the rock face, and onto the surface. In an ideal world where mining 4.0 is the norm, a central control room will run all operations in the mine, which will become a zero-entry zone for workers. Robots will take care of safety critical tasks such as drilling, extracting, crushing and transport of excavated material. The mine could operate continuously while experts on the surface are in charge of managing, monitoring, optimising and maintenance of the systems – essentially making mining a high-tech job.

Smart Mine of the Future report.

A recent report from the IDC echoes this vision saying, “The future of mining is to create the capability to manage the mine as a system – through an integrated web of technologies such as virtualization, robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), sensors, connectivity, and mobility – to command, control, and respond.”

And companies are betting their money on it, “69% of mining companies globally are looking for remote operation and monitoring centres, 56% at new mine methods, 29% at robotics and 27% at unmanned drones.”

Europe is also heavily investing, with several large projects over the past 15 years. The European project I2Mine, which finished last year, focussed on technologies suitable for underground mining activities (at depths greater than 1500m). With 23M Euros invested, it was the biggest EU RTD project funded in the mining sector.

Project Manager, Dr Horst Hejny, said: “The overall objective of the project was the development of innovative technologies and methods for sustainable mining at greater depths.”

One result of the project was a set of sensors for material recognition and boundary layer detection and sorting, as well as a new cutting head which allows for continuous operation.

Full, and even remote, automation, however, is still a long way ahead. Like any robotic system, automated mining will have to deal with a plethora of real-world challenges. And navigating underground mines, or manipulating rock, are very far from ideal laboratory settings. As an intermediate step, researchers are looking to set up test sites where they can experiment with the technology outside of the lab and before deployment in safety critical areas. Juha Röning from the University of Oulu in Finland uses Oulu Zone, a race track that could prove helpful to test automated driving for the mining industry. His laboratory has previous experience in this area, having tested an automated dumper robot for excavated material. It’s an obvious application for a country that Juha says “invented mining”. There is more to it than autonomous driving, however, and his laboratory has been thinking about ways to improve the infrastructure around the deployment of mobile robots, including using advanced positioning systems to increase the precision of robot tracking and control.

Another test site, RACE, which stands for Remote Applications in Challenging Environments, was recently opened by the UK Atomic Energy Authority. The facility conducts R&D and commercial activities focused on developing robots and autonomous systems for challenging environments.

On their website, they claim to be challenging ‘challenging environments’ saying: “Challenging Environments exist in numerous sectors, nuclear, petrochemical, space exploration, construction and mining are examples. The technical hurdle is different for different physical environments and includes radiation, extreme temperature, limited access, vacuum and magnetic fields, but solutions will have common features. The commercial imperative is to enable safe and cost efficient operations.”

Rather than develop full turn-key solutions for mines, many European companies have been providing automation solutions for very specific tasks. Swedish company Sandvik, for example, demonstrated a fully automated LHD (Load, Haul, Dump machine) vehicle.

Also based in Sweden, Atlas Copco has an autonomous LHD system of their own called Scooptram.

https://youtu.be/SvhaDN_sE6Q

Polish company KGHM, a leader in copper and silver production, has been deeply involved in many R&D projects across Europe. Their mines in Lubin and Polkowice Sieroszowice have served as test sites for recent developments. KGHM, and mining companies Boliden and LKAB in Sweden joined forces with several major global suppliers and the academia to develop a common vision for future mining for 2011 to 2020.

The report discusses how to make deep mining of the future “safer, leaner and greener.” The short answer: “we need an innovative organisation that attracts talented young men and women to meet the grand challenges and opportunities of future mineral supply.” They add however that “by 2030 we will not yet have achieved invisible mining, zero waste, or the fully intelligent, automated mine without any human presence”. More time is needed.

Robotics technology also opens a new frontier in areas that can be mined beyond what is currently human-reachable. The new push is towards mining the deep sea, or space in a responsible manner. UK-based company Soil Machine Dynamics Ltd recently developed three vehicles that operate at depths of up to 2,500m on seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) deposits for the company Nautilus Minerals. The subsea mining machines weigh up to 310t and have vessel-based power and control systems, pilot consoles, umbilical systems and launch and recovery systems.

As for the space race, asteroids provide an untapped resource for metallic elements such as iron, nickel, and cobalt. Although space robots have been shown to navigate and drill in space, scaling up to meaningful extraction quantities will be a challenge. And it’s still unclear if the cost and complexity of space mining justify the means.

Nuclear Decommissioning

Like mining, nuclear decommissioning requires zero-entry operations. Across Europe, there are plans to close up to 80 civilian nuclear power reactors in the next ten years.

“The total cost of nuclear decommissioning in the UK alone is currently estimated at £60 billion. Analysis by the National Nuclear Laboratory indicates that 20% of the cost of complex decommissioning will be spent on RAS (Robotics and Autonomous Systems) technology.” – RAS UK Strategy.

Designing robots for the nuclear environment is especially challenging because the robots need to be robust, reliable, safe, and also need to withstand a highly radioactive environment.

In 2012, one of the high hazard plants at Sellafield UK used a custom-made remotely operated robot arm to isolate the risk caused by a 60-year-old First Generations Magnox Storage Pond. The arm had to separate and remove redundant pipework in a high radiation area, and then clean and seal a contaminated pond wall. The redundant pipework was then isolated with special sealants, before its remote removal. The robotic arm then scabbled the pond wall and applied a specialist coating to seal the concrete.

Over 80,000 hours of testing in a separate test facility were needed before the team had confidence the robots would perform flawlessly on such a high-risk task.

The Sellafield site has since added a “Riser” (Remote Intelligence Survey Equipment for Radiation) quadcopter developed by Blue Bear Systems Research Ltd and Createc Ltd. It is equipped with a system that allows it to map the inside of a building and radiation levels.

Little underwater vehicles were deployed in the nuclear storage pools. The robots build on existing technology developed for inspection of offshore oil and gas industries prepared by company James Fisher Nuclear. They were initially sent to image the environment but are now used for basic manipulation tasks.

In Marcoule France, Maestro, a tele-operated robot arm, is also being using to decommission a site. The robot can laser-cut 4mx2m metal structures into smaller pieces. Humans could do this faster, but 30 minutes on the site would be lethal.

And with so many robot arms entering the field, KUKA has also developed a suite of robots specifically for nuclear decommissioning.

Given the high-risk nature of nuclear decommissioning, traditional robotic solutions seem to be favoured for now, as they are tested and understood. However, a new wave of innovative solutions is also making its way to the market.

Swiss startup Rovenso, for example, developed ROVéo, a robot whose unique four-wheel design allows it to climb over obstacles up to two-thirds its height. They aim to produce a larger-scale model equipped with a robotic arm for use in dismantling nuclear plants.

OCRobotics in the UK is also working closely with the nuclear industry to build robots that have a better reach than modern industrial robot arms. Their snake arms can be fit with lasers or other tools, and can slither through nearly any structure.

Andy Graham, Technical Director at OC Robotics, said “Robots have the potential to improve everyone’s quality of life. Reducing the need for people to enter hazardous workplaces and confined spaces is central to what we do at OC Robotics, whether the application is in manufacturing industries, inspection and maintenance in the oil and gas sector, or decommissioning nuclear power stations. Users are becoming more and more aware of the potential for robots to enable their workers to work more comfortably and safely from outside these spaces”.

“The Lasersnake 2 project, led by OC Robotics and part-funded by the UK government, has developed and is currently testing a snake-arm robot equipped with a powerful laser capable of cutting effortlessly through 60mm thick steel. The same snake-arm robot can be equipped with a gripper enabling it to lift 25kg at a reach of about 5m, and has also been demonstrated underwater in an environment similar to a nuclear storage pond. With this cutting capability and the ability to snake through small holes and around obstacles, this enables “keyhole surgery” for nuclear decommissioning, leaving containment structures, shielding and cells intact while dismantling the processing equipment inside them”.

Beyond decommissioning, robots are also being used for new energy infrastructure including at ITER, the next generation fusion research device being built in the south of France that will achieve ‘burning plasma’, one of the required steps for fusion power. Remote handling is critical to ITER, says project partner RACE.

“Cutting and welding large diameter stainless steel pipes is a fundamental process for remote maintenance of ITER.” RACE has been developing concepts to replace remotely the beam sources of the neutral beam heating system, high energy ion beams that are used to heat the plasmas to 200M °C.

From their website, “A monorail crane was designed with high lift in a compact space, with an innovative control system for high radiation environments. The beam line transporter operates along the full length of the beam line, like an industrial production line. It has a load capacity of many tonnes, haptic feedback and is fully remotely operated and remotely recoverable.”

“ITER provides some seriously challenging environments for robotics: high radiation dose; elevated temperatures; limited access; large, compact equipment and some very challenging inspection and maintenance procedures to implement fast and reliably, without failure.”

A cross-sectional view of the ITER tokamak.

These projects are just part of a worldwide effort to advance the safety of nuclear applications. Japan has also been working on its robot fleet, in response to the Fukushima disaster and the cleanup efforts still ahead. Their robots take different shapes and forms depending on their task, and can blast dry ice, inspect vents, cut pipes, and remove debris.

Competitions like the recent Darpa Robotics Challenge, or the European Robotics League (ERL) Emergency Challenge, have been driving the state of the art forward. ERL Emergency is an outdoor multi-domain robotic competition inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident. The challenge requires teams of land, underwater and flying robots to work together to survey the scene, collect environmental data, and identify critical hazards.

“Robotics competitions are not just for testing a robot outside a laboratory, or engaging with an audience; they are events that get people together, inspire younger generations and facilitate cooperation and exchange of knowledge between multiple research groups. Robotics competitions provide a perfect platform for challenging, developing and showcasing robotics technologies.” said Marta Palau, ERL Emergency Project Manager

Similar scenarios are also being explored by Juha Röning from the University of Oulu in Finland. He aims to use flying robots to map radiation levels after a nuclear accident thanks to support from the Nordic Nuclear Safety Research Agency. He says “in the future, flying robots could be used to map radiation levels, and then a second team of ground robots could be sent in for the cleanup”.

Overall, robots are helping workers avoid dirty and dangerous areas, while making the job more efficient, and potentially fulfilling. We are only at the initial stages, however, as many of these high-risk tasks require years of testing before new technologies are implemented.

Founded in 2005 by three researchers at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Universal Robots quickly grew to become one of the top producers of collaborative robots. The company was acquired by Teradyne last year for more than €300M. This is just one example in a string of European robotics companies acquired in the past year. Medical device company TransEnterix Surgical acquired Italian Telelap ALF-X robot for €85M. UK-based Soil Machine Dynamics Ltd, maker of remote intervention equipment operating in hazardous environments, was acquired for €165M. Also in the hazardous business, Oxford Technologies was acquired by Kurion for an undisclosed amount. And German maker of flying robots Ascending Technologies, was acquired by Intel.

Universal Robots

VC funding worldwide hit a record high, estimated at €825M last year. At least five European startups benefited from the investment frenzy. French company BALYO announced raising €10 million for their robotic material handling solutions. Sky Futures, experts in drone inspections in oil and gas raised €3M. French agribot company Naïo Technologies raised €3M. Rapyuta Robotics raised €2.65M to build robots for physical security purposes, and Flyability raised more than €2M to produce its inspection drone.

Flyability Gimball Drone. Photo credit: Pierre-Yves Guernier

And this doesn’t even look at crowdfunding. French startup Blue Frog Robotics raised €565,000 on Indiegogo for their social robot Buddy. Swiss robot Fotokite, a tethered drone for aerial imaging, received €366,000 on Indiegogo. Robo WunderKind from Austria raised €218,000 on Kickstarter for their educational robot blocks.

Buddy from Blue Frog Robotics

Looking at these numbers, it’s no surprise that there is a lot of excitement about startups. Beyond the startups mentioned here, there are dozens more currently building up. So, how do we make sure there is a clear pipeline from ideation to market? The key is to provide visibility, mentoring, and funding.

Visibility

Robot startup competitions provide excellent visibility to teams, access to investment, and inspire the next generation of students to start a company.

“Startup competitions are a good source for contacts, press, and sometimes money”, says Ricardo Téllez, CTO and Co-Founder of The Construct Sim, and winner of this year’s Entrepreneurship Award at the European Robotics Forum.

“Startup competitions are excellent practice grounds for startups. They push startups to be fact-based about their viability, express with clarity the ideas behind the business, and defend the startup position in front of a panel of experts. This provides excellent feedback for the startups that they can learn from. It’s not about winning, but really about gaining the experience that will be necessary when the time comes to present your startup to investors or sell your product to the world.”

The Construct also won an award at the International Robot Launch competition in 2015, as did ArtiMinds, German maker of semi-automatic control interfaces for complex industrial tasks. Another winner at the European Robotics Forum was Robird, a startup working on bird control, from the Netherlands.

Robird from Clear Flight Solutions

At Innorobo 2015, the winning robot-makers were Reach Robotics, UK-based creators of wireless battling robots for edutainment.

Reach Robotics

And in the UK, OpenBionics, maker of a 3D prosthetic hand, has won a myriad of prizes, including a recent Dyson award.

Open Bionics

Mentoring

Being part of a nurturing environment is key to succeeding. Fortunately, a growing number of startup incubators and accelerators are popping up across Europe.

“Business incubators in Europe are helping robotic startup companies get the required funding and professional support. The number of European incubators have therefore significantly increased with a jump of 360% from 2007 to 2014. In the UK and France, most incubators are concentrated around the national capital, and in countries such as Spain and Sweden, these are spread throughout the territory. These incubators provide innovation support to disseminate the technology and competence to robotic ventures across Europe,” said Bharath Kanniappan, Technavio’s lead analysts for robotics research as part of a report released last week.

Incubators include:

• Robotdalen – Swedish robotics incubator funded by the Swedish Innovation Agency VINNOVA, The European Regional Development Fund as well as industry, academia and public sector in Central Sweden.
• RoboCluster – Danish innovation network that brings together expertise in the field of robotics research, development at design.
• Blue Ocean Robotics – Danish-based robotics initiative enabling commercial success of new ideas and research within robotics and automation.
• Kickstart – Swiss Accelerator providing a fast-track gateway for entrepreneurs from near and far to access the Swiss innovation ecosystem in robotics.
• ROBOTT-NET – Driven by four Research Technology Organisations in Denmark, Germany, Spain and UK, this European initiative is looking to accelerate business ideas on robotics for manufacturing and/or professional services.
• Odense Robotics – Danish city, Odense, has a cluster of companies and research institutes specializing in robotics and automation.

There are also a number of industry-based incubators, including the Siemens Frontier Program, and the Robert Bosch Start-up GmbH.

And finally, many universities are running their own startup spaces. The Bristol Robotics Laboratory for example hosts over 10 startups directly within their research laboratories.

Funding
The European Commission and many national funding agencies provide grants specifically to translate research results to market, these are excellent ways to fund a runway that startups can use to increase the technology readiness level of their products. The European Commission funded 11 Innovation Actions under the Horizon2020 Robotics call dedicated to end-user research and improving translation to market. A large number of research projects also include industrial partners.

Judith Viladomat from Spanish company PAL Robotics said “We’ve been involved in 4 European projects, this has allowed us to test our robots in different scenarios, and has sometimes inspired entirely new robotic platforms.”

Venture capital funding is also increasing, with firms such as PRIMNEXT, and Robolution Capital focussing specifically on robotics.

Although the startup ecosystem is growing strong, there are also challenges ahead. European perception of failure needs to change so young entrepreneurs are empowered by failure, rather than held back by the fear of it, or perception from peers. We also need to find a way to encourage European startups to stay in Europe. This will require large European companies to become active players in robotics investment, and a long-term vision for startups to see beyond the quick sell. Finally, there is little diversity in the robotics startup scene with the percentage of women and minorities in the single digits.

Read the previous article in the series here.

The ten-part series on European Robotics will be published every two weeks on the SPARC website and Robohub. Funding for the series was provided by RockEU – a Coordination and Support Action funded under FP7 by the European Commission, Grant Agreement Number 611247.

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Source: Deepfield Robotics

Farmers are increasingly under pressure to feed more people. The UN predicts that the world population will rise from 7.3 billion today to 9.7 billion in 2050. This growing population has become pickier about the food they eat. In the EU alone, the organic market grew by 7.4% in 2014 with sales valued at €24 billion. Beyond organic food, there is an overall push to make farming greener by using less water and pesticides.

“Agriculture is most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, but it’s also one of its causes”, says Birgit Schulz from Deepfield Robotics. “Making cultivation sustainable is essential”.

These factors mean farmers need to produce more, at a higher quality, and in a sustainable manner. With youth turning away from the profession, there is also less labour available to drive the vision forward.

Enter the robots — set to improve production yield, while reducing resources required, and making farming an exciting high-tech profession.

“Few people want to get up at 5am, farming is a heavy and dirty job.”, says Eldert van Henten, head of the the Farm Technology Group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He adds that, “the high-tech nature of future farming might attract new people into the profession, but also bring back those who left”.

Robots are just part of an overall push towards precision agriculture. Given the potential, Europe has funded at least 6 projects around robotic farming. And there is plenty to do given the large number of tasks on a farm that are ripe for automation.

For crop farming, robots need to autonomously navigate their environment and perform actions at set locations, for example, picking a fruit, spraying a pesticide, planting a seed, imaging a plant, or making a measurement. Glasshouses are slightly simpler to move around since the environment is more carefully engineered, and is often fit with tracks which robots follow to reach desired locations. In the case of outdoor farming, the robots work by receiving a plan with a set of locations to visit on the field. When the robot trajectories are known, the robot can use GPS positioning and a closed-loop control to make sure it remains on track. When the task is to follow an unknown trajectory, for example a crop row, vision is often used to allow the robot to find its way. Robots are wirelessly connected to a central operator to both receive updated instructions regarding the mission, and report status and data. Put together, making an autonomous farm robot requires clever controllers, localisation and communication systems. To a certain extent, the technology is similar to that of autonomous cars applied to agtech. Where it differs is that farming robots often need to manipulate their environment, picking vegetables or fruits, applying pesticides in a localised manner, or planting seeds. All these tasks require sensing, manipulation, and processing of their own.

The recently finished project RHEA developed a fleet of tractors and aerial robots with sensor systems to discriminate weeds from crops and apply herbicides where needed. Pablo Gonzalez de Santos, the lead on the project, explains what is achievable today:

“Autonomous robots have already been demonstrated in many agricultural activities. Conventional tasks such as tilling, sowing, harvesting of grains, can be performed using autonomous robots with the accuracy provided by the vehicle itself (currently about ±2 cm when using GNSS technology). For other tasks that demand the use of vision to follow trajectories, the current accuracy is approximately ±7 cm.”

When it comes to using robots with intelligent tools, the achievements are promising.

“Autonomous tractors carrying herbicide sprayers coordinating with drones equipped with weed-detection systems have proven to save up to 75% of the herbicide. Autonomous tractors equipped with on-board weed detection systems are able to kill 90% of weeds on a field.”

Bosch startup ‘Deepfield Robotics’ also develops technologies for sustainable farming. “Our products are sensor networks and robots”, says Birgit Schulz.

Their robots navigate plant rows, sense the plants, and send the data to the farmers to help optimise seed breeding. If equipped with a “weed puncher”, the robot can literally drive weeds into the ground. Deepfield Robotics also provides smart sensors that can be positioned in the fields. Resulting networks are already deployed in farms to monitor soil conditions for asparagus.

Source: Deepfield Robotics

There are however many challenges ahead. Pablo Gonzalez de Santos says “Technical developments are required to identify fruits and analyse their degree of ripeness in harsh conditions (changing light conditions, presence of dust, extreme temperatures, wind variations), as well as to detect weeds. Robot position accuracy also has to be enhanced to help optimise pesticide applications and the precision of manipulation. Although industrial manipulators exhibit very good accuracy and speed in factories, their application in farming is more difficult due to the objects moving, being soft and delicate, and obstacle-rich environments.” Just imagine what it takes to pick a sweet pepper from a plant, compared to grabbing a bolt on an assembly line. As it turns out, sweet pepper harvesting is the subject of the recent Horizon2020 Sweeper project, which follows a previous EU project called Crops.

Eldert van Henten says, “It’s not just vision, tactile sensing would also be helpful to pick peppers out of a busy scene. Farmers definitely use touch. ”

Source: Sweeper project

And as is often the case in robotics, the lack of clear regulation is causing a headache for companies entering the field.

“Safety is an issue – robots have to be capable of detecting what is going on in their surroundings and act accordingly to protect humans, wildlife, and themselves from crashes and accidents”, says Pablo Gonzalez de Santos. He adds that, “it is completely unclear who carries responsibilities for injuries caused by autonomous ground robots. The legislation for drones is also restrictive, requiring special authorisations, even for research purposes. “

Birgit Schulz agrees that safety and regulation considerations are paramount and raises questions regarding how to “define and implement the right degree of autonomy for the robot” as well as a number of logistical considerations including “How does the robot get to the field? How can we make it easy to use the robot? What happens if a robot gets stuck?”

The good news is that farms are already open to new technologies being deployed and the investments that are required. You just need to look at some of their equipment to see the high-tech machinery in place. A little known fact: farms are already amongst the most prominent adopters of robotic technology.

Lely, which is based in the Netherlands, has a fleet of over 20,000 milking robots installed throughout the world. The Lely Astronaut A4 box allows cows to be milked when they choose so, instead of when the farmer needs it to be done. The robot attaches incoming cows to the teat cups, reattaches them if required, and detaches them after milking. As an added bonus, data about the cows is collected, which can help the farmer monitor the herd and take action should a problem arrive, or simply to improve yield.

The company also makes autonomous mobile robots that clean the barn, and automatically feed the cows with Juno and Vector.

And the farm of tomorrow will include many robots working together. The MARS project, which stands for Mobile Agricultural Robot Swarms, demonstrated a cloud-based approach to farming at Hannover Messe last week. By deploying many simpler and smaller robots, they hope to make their farm-solutions safer, more reliable, and productive, while avoiding soil compaction that comes with larger robots navigating the fields. A swarm could also provide continuous operation, by having robots take turns charging or undergoing maintenance.

Source: MARS project

It’s an all around exciting time to deploy robots on farms, and there is a clear need to do so given the drive for increased food production, and sustainability. Steps are currently being made to develop the technology that will enable the automation of individual tasks before integration in a “digital farm” that will empower farmers to run operations in a fulfilling and efficient way. But there is still a lot of work to do. Eldert van Henten says robots will need to be “quick, precise, 100% successful, and cost-effective” before we can hope to see them on our farms. But, he adds, there is a “trend towards human-robot co-working. With one or more robots doing (part of) the job while being supervised, instructed by a human, or jointly working with a human. This might improve acceptance and feasibility of robotics technology for the more challenging tasks in agriculture”.

Read the previous article in the series here.

The ten-part series on European Robotics will be published every two weeks on the SPARC website and Robohub. Funding for the series was provided by RockEU – a Coordination and Support Action funded under FP7 by the European Commission, Grant Agreement Number 611247.

Autonomous cars promise to make roads safer, while giving us extra time for work or leisure. This could result in billions of Euros for the economy thanks to increased productivity, and a projected €40.3 billion in end-customer spending this year. Autonomous cars will also have a social impact, as those who have lost the ability to drive regain independence. And the hope is that it will lead to a greener world thanks to transport sharing and more efficient traffic management.

So what can we expect to see on the roads in the future, and what are the challenges ahead?

Autonomous cars typically work by rapidly integrating readouts from sophisticated sensors (cameras, radars, lasers) to extract key information about the car’s environment including roads, signs, other cars, obstacles, or pedestrians. Machine learning is often used to automatically generate the car’s understanding of the world, and integrate it with prior information provided by maps, or aerial views. This information is then used to guide the behaviour of the car in terms of steering, accelerating, and breaking. The car may also be connected to a network (think of an internet for cars) to provide additional information and feedback.

Example of a Google car’s internal representation of the world at an intersection.

The first thing to realise is that making an autonomous car is difficult. Raul Rojas, Professor at the Free University of Berlin, has been developing autopilots for the past 10 years. His cars are already licensed to drive in Germany given two requirements; that they have a safety driver, and a very expensive insurance.

In his words, “The best description of an autonomous car is to call it a taxi: any person inside the car is a passenger and the driver is a computer. Simulating a driver’s behaviour with the computer is more difficult than playing chess, because in the second case we know the rules exactly. Instead, for a taxi driver, we do not really know how they recognise objects in a split second, how they recognise intentions and gestures, and how they elegantly avoid them. Anything a person can do subconsciously is very hard for the computer to imitate. The late Herbert Simon used to say: it is easier to simulate a professor than a taxi driver”.

Given the challenge to design fully autonomous cars, companies are expected to roll out autopilots incrementally, starting with more structured environments such as the highway.

Rojas says “you should expect companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Volkswagen, and Tesla to introduce an autopilot for the highway. They not only have working prototypes, but also pre-series designs. This means they are already looking at the production and marketing of these cars, which I would expect commercially in 2020.”

Mercedes-Benz F 015 Concept Vehicle, Geneva Motor Show on March 1, 2016

Fully autonomous cars however will happen much later, potentially in 20 to 30 years. To operate in a city, cars will need to properly deal with pedestrians and complex environments.

“How do we make sense of the behaviour of other drivers or pedestrians, and can we predict their behaviour within the next few seconds? It’s very easy for humans to do this. By looking at pedestrians, and their body position, you can tell if they will cross the road or stand still. You can also detect if a driver in front looks reliable, or not, and that influences how carefully you drive. Prediction and analysis of behaviour is still difficult for computer, but it’s something we need to do if we want autonomous cars on the street” – Raul Rojas

In addition, city infrastructure will have to be reimagined, which will require close coordination between experts from many different disciplines including regulators, city planners, network providers, car makers, and end users. As a first step, autonomous car trials are underway in cities across Europe. Greenwich in London announced last year that it would be deploying autonomous cars as part of the £8m GATEway project (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment), which is led by the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory. The resulting ‘pods’ will operate at low speeds, in known spaces, and as part of a fully connected network that monitors information from a central ‘control room’. These experiments will help understand needs in terms of infrastructure and operating costs, and could improve the case for more autonomous cars in urban environments in the future. Allowing the public to be immersed in environments with pods will also provide important insight regarding perception and acceptance of the technology.

GATEway pod

The final element holding back autonomous cars is liability. Andrea Bertolini is an expert in Robot Law at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy and the organiser of an upcoming summer school about the Regulation of Robotics in Europe.

“Liability plays a gigantic role in the deployment of autonomous cars on roads. For insurance companies to provide policies, they will need a clear framework to foretell who is liable between the driver of the vehicle, the owner, and the producer. Currently, the driver is liable, but if the car is fully autonomous, the producer would be liable. If we have an intermediate system then it gets much more complicated.”

As a solution, Andrea suggests designing clear regulation that would make it easy to assign liability. Without these rules, he expects the deployment of autonomous cars will be held back for years.

“We should be creative with the design of liability rules to foster the development and diffusion of autonomous cars. In particular, we need a clear-cut rule that determines who is liable. For example, we could decide that the producer is liable in 100% of cases, regardless of who is at fault in the accident. Such a clear definition in the law would prevent litigation and therefore encourage innovation by startups and industry. All the producer would need to do is purchase insurance on the market, which insurance companies would be happy to sell since the simple rule would make it easy for them to calculate risks, and associated premiums. The producer would simply take the price of insurance into account when calculating the final price of the car. Alternatively, if the owner is liable in 100% of cases, then the owner would purchase the insurance. Insurance companies would likewise be able to take into account the risks involved, irrespective of if this driver is actually driving the car or just sitting in it.”

There is reason to think this clear-cut solution is in the works. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the USA recently announced that a car’s software could qualify as the “driver” and as the responsible entity.

The hope is that the incremental steps taken today will allow us to build the infrastructure, regulation, and technology needed for fully autonomous cars to become a reality in the long term. If this results in a greener, safer, and more productive society, then it’s worth the long wait ahead.

Read the previous article in the series here.

The ten-part series on European Robotics will be published every two weeks on the SPARC website and Robohub. Funding for the series was provided by RockEU – a Coordination and Support Action funded under FP7 by the European Commission, Grant Agreement Number 611247.

Source: Fraunhofer IPA/photo: Jens Kilian

By 2020, a quarter of Europeans will be over 60. In their silver age, many would like to stay in their homes and will require care from family or social workers. Unfortunately, the number of caregivers is diminishing year-after-year due to shifting demographics and an increase in working families. This leads to a ‘care deficit’ that poses a major challenge to most European societies. And today’s social workers are often hard pressed, wishing they had more time to connect with the people they care for, rather than the minuted dance of tasks that need to be done. It’s also hard physical work requiring workers to bend over up to 1300 times per shift .

It is like you are part of a machine. You’ve got to be here at this time and you’ve got to finish at this time. [. . .] It’s all down to minutes. – Peter, care worker

It’s an area that is ripe for innovation, enabling both day to day care, and more meaningful human interactions.

So, how can robotics technology help as you grow older?

Connecting you with loved ones
Telepresence robots allow care workers and family to drop by your house remotely. There is no need to pick up a phone, or start a computer. The robot, essentially a videoconference system on wheels, will drive up to you and initiate a conversation. It’s the modern day equivalent of a knock on the door. The idea is not to replace in person visits, but to allow them to happen more frequently, and at the times that matter most. Imagine having your daughter drop by – albeit sometimes virtually – multiple times a day, or being able to ask for help when needed.

Giraff, a telepresence robot developed through two European Projects (ExCITE and Giraff+) is currently undergoing tests in homes across Europe and is already available for purchase.

Helping you get around
Reduced mobility is one of the main causes for people joining a care home. Whether it’s walking, lifting everyday objects, eating, bathing, or getting up from a chair or bed.

An estimated 9 million people in the EU need help getting out of bed. – Multi-Annual Roadmap for Robotics

Focus has been on making robots that can help with specific mobility-related tasks. The MOBOT project for example is currently developing an intelligent robotic walker that could help you sit down in a chair, or assist as you move around your house.

MOBOT Project

LEA from Robot Care Systems is also a carebot disguised as a stroller that may help you get out of bed, walk, or hold a cup. LEA also knows about your daily routine, and can sense if you’re not taking medication, eating, or drinking.
And Company Besticinc, founded by Sten Hemmingsson who was disabled by Polio, looks at how robots can help you eat.

It is extremely important for a person’s integrity that you’re able to eat independently. – Sten Hemmingsson

Rather than buy a robot for your home, you may instead be wearing it as an exoskeleton to help with everyday movements. The AXO-SUIT project is providing inroads into developing an exoskeleton specifically adapted to help the elderly move, reach, and grasp. This is not an easy task as special consideration is needed to make the material light-weight, and delicate. In the future, these suits may even feel more like soft smart pants, than rigid bodies made of bolts and metal.

AXO-SUIT Project

Getting things done

Care-o-bot 4

The next step is to allow these robots to help around the home. This will require them to have grippers so they can fetch medicine, or a bottle of water. The robots may be remote operated, or may follow your commands in an autonomous manner. This has been the focus of the team behind the Care-o-bot robot. Their robot for assistive living, now in its fourth version, is the result of years of development and more than six related European projects.

The team behind the Care-o-bot also worked with CASERO, a robot that can help workers in care homes take over the heavy lifting. The robot can be used to collect the laundry, or carry water bottles around.

CASERO has certainly been a great help for us in our day to day work, transporting things [. . .]. It saves us time, and we can spend more time with the residents. – Silke Mlakar – care home worker

And if you believe the Robot-Era project, you might even send your robot out to shop for groceries, or pick up a prescription at the pharmacy.

Keeping you company
However sophisticated the robot, you may find yourself emotionally attached to its daily presence and enjoying its companionship. Human-robot interactions with the elderly need to be carefully assessed to make sure they are providing just the right level of interaction to be as helpful as possible, without being misleading. One of the most successful companion robots to date has been Paro the robot seal developed by AIST in Japan. The robot pet reacts to touch and has been shown to calm dementia patients and improve social interactions. This new form of Robot Therapy has also been shown to have benefits beyond eldercare, including to improve social interactions in children with autism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFMenahpJtI

Making your home smart
And why not make your home a robot? A connected home could automatically check that the cooker is off, order food when the fridge is empty, remind you of appointments, and handle the entertainment system. The home may also coordinate a suite of mobile robots, including your vacuum cleaner, or other task-specific helpers. These smart living spaces, which build on the latest trends in Internet of Things, machine learning, and robotics, could deliver on the promise of better care outcomes.

Like many robotics technologies, integration is key. To move things along, universities are building dedicating assistive living spaces that will allow them to explore integrated homes in a well controlled research environment.

Barriers and prospects
Technology for assistive living leads to real challenges with privacy, ethics, and liability. The act of caring comes with deep responsibility, and potential for harm if not done carefully. In fact, most carebots developed in the laboratory have not made their way to the home. Public acceptance is still quite low, with the latest Eurobaromoter survey on autonomous systems reporting that 51% of European respondents are uncomfortable with having a robot to provide services and companionship to elderly or infirm people. Much of this is due to a lack of exposure to the technology, which will improve as robots become more prominent in the care sector. Thanks to the International Standards Organisation (ISO), there are also new standards for carebots, which should help pave the way for startups and SMEs who would like to enter the sector. The EU market for robots and devices assisting elderly people is estimated to reach €13 billion by 2016. Given this potential, Europe has been heavily investing in assistive living within the Horizon2020 robotics programmes, and also through the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, the Active Assisted Living Joint Programme, and national programmes such as the UKs Long Term Care Revolution project.

This is needed as we are still very far from the robot in the movie Frank and Me. Making robots is hard, and we’re just starting to see robots for assistive living leave the laboratory to help with specific tasks such as walking or eating. More versatile carebots still require some work, and most important, plenty of real-word experiments. Fortunately, any developments in assistive living have the potential to improve quality of life for the elderly and carers. And it will become a necessity in the future.

Read the previous article in the series here.

The ten-part series on European Robotics will be published every two weeks on the SPARC website and Robohub. Funding for the series was provided by RockEU – a Coordination and Support Action funded under FP7 by the European Commission, Grant Agreement Number 611247.

Making robots is no easy task. If you talk to roboticists, they will tell you that it took years before the last robot they built or programmed was any good at performing a specific task. And although you may see videos of impressive robot feats, the reality is often more sobering. Remember the video of robots falling at the DARPA Robotics Challenge?

So why is it difficult to make robots? Here’s a breakdown looking at why robotics still requires years of research and development before we can expect to see them in our everyday lives .

Power

Most robots are required to operate without being plugged into a power socket. This means they need to carry their own energy source, be it a battery pack or gas tank. Small drones can typically operate for less than 1 hour, which is also the battery life of most advanced humanoids such as ATLAS from Google’s Boston Dynamics. So by the time the robot has walked out the door and made a few steps, it’s time for a power recharge.

Progress is being made, and a push for batteries that allow our laptops and cellphones to work for days on end is also powering the increase in robot run time. Take the same ATLAS robot which was tethered just a year ago, and now carries its own battery pack. The main challenge is that robot motion is often power hungry. Most drones will use the largest portion of their energy powering their propellers rather than computation, sensing, and communication combined. Larger batteries could give a robot more power, but will also make it heavier, which then requires more energy to move the robot. The reality is that robots are often docked to a charging station.

Beyond power, efficiency is also a real challenge. For example, human muscles are capable of impressive strength, yet many robot manipulators don’t have strength to carry heavy loads.

Biological muscles are still an order of magnitude lighter and smaller for generating the same force as robot motors. – Herman Bruyninckx

Sensing

Did you ever wonder why most demos show robots manipulating objects with bright colors or with a QR code?

Robots still have a hard time recognizing everyday objects. And although machine learning algorithms have proven effective in allowing computers to label images with sentences such as “black cat on a white chair”, robots also need to know what the objects are used for, and how to go about interacting with them. A fuchsia shirt, striped jacket, or a pair of trousers will all look quite different to a laundry folding robot, and would require a different sequence of motions. And even though cameras are helpful, image processing is still a burdensome task. Sensors like the Microsoft Kinect, and Laser Range Finders have enabled robots to make 3D maps of their environment. With the resulting point clouds, they can detect obstacles, build maps, and know where they are in them. Inferring the meaning of the scene however, is a step further. Beyond vision, touch and sound are still seldom used in robotic systems. Fortunately, robots have access to a number of dedicated sensors that are not human-centric, and are better suited for specific tasks, including accelerometers, temperature or gas sensors, and GPS.

Manipulation

Industrial robots are very successful at manipulating specific pre-defined objects in a repetitive manner. Manipulation outside of these constrained environments is one of the greatest challenges in robotics. There is a reason most successful commercial robots for the home environment, including telepresence robots, vacuum cleaners, and personal robots, are not built to pick up objects. Amazon solved this problem in their warehouse by building teams of humans and robots to fulfil orders. Robots move shelves to the workers who are then responsible for picking objects off the shelves and placing them in boxes. Just last year, Amazon ran a “picking challenge” at ICRA to help move the state of the art forward. The competition was won by Team RBO from Berlin. The RoCKIn competition in Europe also focuses on manipulation in the home and work environments.

Companies such as Shadow Robot are trying to capture the fine motor control that allows us to interact with everyday objects in a robotic hand – using these manipulators often requires precise planning. An alternative solution has often been to use proven manipulators from the industrial sector or increasingly soft robot manipulators that conform to different shapes of objects.

Cognition

Current robots typically use well determined algorithms that allow them to complete specific tasks, for example navigating from point A to point B, or moving an object on an assembly line. Designing collaborative robots for SMEs, or robots for the home, will increasingly require them to understand new environments and learn on the job. What seems like a simple task to us, could turn into an complex cognitive exercise for a robot. Projects such as the iCub have been making progress in this direction, aiming to reach the cognitive levels of a 2.5-year old child.

Deep learning is also providing new avenues. A team at the University of Zurich and IDSIA recently showed drones learning to fly through forest trails using Deep Neural Networks.

Whatever the learning embedded in the robot, it’s important to realise that we are still far from anything that resembles human intelligence or understanding. The forest trail navigation mostly crunches the data from lots of forest trail images and performs the correct motor commands in response. This is closer to a human learning to balance a poll on the palm of their hand through practice, rather than the development of a real understanding for the laws of physics.

Unstructured environments

The world is a messy place, and for most robots, operating in unstructured environments is difficult . That’s why commercial robots have been most successful in factories, on warehouse floors or roads, in the open air, and underwater. On the flip side, there are very few robots that operate autonomously in the home environment, other than vacuum cleaner robots. The Dyson 360 eye required over 100 000 hours of production time and 16 years of development before the company was convinced it would do a good job navigating a room. Their trials showed that kids would sometimes dance before their robot or play with it, attach little cardboard ears in front of its camera, or cover it entirely. Not to mention, every home is unique.

https://youtu.be/8c2SFXQ5zHM

Integration

The trick to understanding integration is to think like a robot. What does it take for a new robot to bring a glass of water to an elderly person in a house? First the robot would need to have a map of the house, perhaps building it from scratch by navigating through the corridors and rooms. It would then need to understand the command from the person to get the water, potentially using speech recognition. The robot would then use its map to plan a trajectory to the kitchen, avoiding obstacles, and constantly updating its estimation of where it is as it goes. Once at the cupboard, the robot would need to open the cupboard, locate a transparent glass, and pick it up. The robot would then turn to the sink, open the water tap using fine motor skills, position the glass under the stream, but only until the glass is full, and then navigate to the person without spilling. It would then gently put the glass on a table. This task requires safe hardware, an impressive sensor suite, and complex algorithms, which currently only exist as stand-alone pieces, if at all. Integrating all these components in a single robot is very difficult, and that’s just for one task – fetching a glass of water.

About integration, John Hallam from the University of Southern Denmark says

You’re not building a robot – you’re engineering a system – too often people focus on making the device. By doing that they miss out on important possibilities.

Legal framework and public perception

Startups are increasingly building robots that have the potential to be disruptive because they solve specific problems well. Drones and autonomous cars are a good example of this. The challenge for these startups is that regulation is not yet in place to allow their products to be commercialised.

Andrea Bertolini from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy says there is “too much litigation and too little ex ante regulation” , meaning that startups may end up taking unnecessary legal risks, which could be prevented if better regulation was in place to support innovation up front.

And in a world where human safety and customer expectation is paramount, finding the right standards to make robots a reality has been an ongoing effort in the community.

Finally, misrepresentation in the public about what robots can do increases public concern. This carries the danger that policy makers may react to public opinion caused by a lack of balanced information. Public concerns need to be discussed and the responsible use of robots promoted so that policy is focused on what Europe needs.

It’s still hard to make a robot

Robotics is making strides in the development of specific technologies and robotics solutions for dedicated tasks. After years of development in research laboratories, robots are just starting to find their way to the consumer market. We are still very far away from Rosie the Robot however. Making Rosie would require profound advances in power, sensing, manipulation, cognition, and the magic glue – integration.

Read the previous article in the series here.

The ten-part series on European Robotics will be published every two weeks on the SPARC website and Robohub. Funding for the series was provided by RockEU – a Coordination and Support Action funded under FP7 by the European Commission, Grant Agreement Number 611247.

Europe’s roadmap for robotics, updated last December, highlights a future where robots break from their traditional stronghold in the manufacturing sector to power healthcare, agriculture, transport, civil, consumer, and commercial applications.

Historically, Europe was known for manufacturing and supplying nearly one third of the world’s industrial robots, with companies like ABB, Comau, KUKA, and Schunk leading the way. This is changing with a rise in companies worldwide producing industrial robots. There is now a realisation that beyond big industry, SMEs are becoming the powerhouse of Europe.

What usually gets lost is that more than 99% of all European businesses are, in fact, SMEs. They provide two out of three of the private sector jobs and contribute to more than half of the total value-added created by businesses in the EU. Moreover, SMEs are the true back-bone of the European economy, being primarily responsible for wealth and economic growth, next to their key role in innovation and R&D.

The empowerment of SMEs happens by both allowing them to be productive through the use of robotic technology, and by nurturing a new wave of robotics startups that will mature into the next successful robotics companies.

This vision has been reinforced by the very way in which Europe funds robotics projects. In 2014, Europe launched a public-private partnership called SPARC with the European Commission investing €700M, and the private sector represented by euRobotics investing triple that amount. The total of €2.8B is the largest civilian robotics programme in the world. The Robotics Multi-Annual Roadmap, prepared by euRobotics, highlights the needs of the field, and the European Commission uses it as a guideline to fund projects. This strategy has led to a strong integration between academia and industry. It is not uncommon for larger companies to be the leaders of European projects, or to receive a significant portion of the funding. And a number of funding instruments are specifically designed to empower startups and SMEs. A full list of European Projects funded can be found here and here.

So, what will SMEs be working on? For the most part, focus is on improving quality of life for Europeans with practical solutions to practical problems. The technology is motivated by societal challenges, including: aging populations, healthcare, concern for the environment, and access to resources including food, minerals, and energy.

In healthcare, examples include robots that assist the disabled and elderly in their homes, smart prosthetics, and surgical robots for high-tech operations. Agriculture is being transformed through aerial imaging and sensing, as well as the automation of specific tasks including milking, plowing, and picking. Autonomous cars could have an impact on quality of life and the environment by optimising the use of resources and time, while reducing the amount of energy used. And with tasks such as mining, construction, and high-risk inspection, robots will increasingly be doing the dull, dirty and difficult.

Startups driving these applications are bubbling up from robotics incubators and innovation hubs across Europe. Most recent disruptive companies to emerge include the maker of 3D printed prosthetics Open Bionics, Blue Frog Robotics and their social robot Buddy, and Flyability with their Gimball drone for inspection.

To be successful, SMEs will need to be productive and innovative. “There are relatively few robotic systems designed specifically for the SME market.” – Robotics MAR . The vision is to make robots that can safely operate near humans and are easy to program through intuitive interfaces. Ideally, the operator would show the robot a new object to manipulate, and then guide it through a series of actions by manually moving its arms, effectively teaching the robot like one might teach a coworker. This would allow companies to readily use their robots on different tasks, without needing a specialised programmer. These so-called co-bots, if cost-effective, could increase productivity and allow for new types of industry that rapidly personalise products to consumer needs or iterate on design. Danish company Universal Robots saw the potential in this market, and quickly grew to become one of the top companies producing co-bots. Universal Robots was sold last year for more than €350M.

The surge in robotics technology is not happening in isolation. Recent advances in the internet of things, and a push towards smart European cities, are leading to new ecosystems in which robotics will play an important role. The key is to integrate with these news areas, and build on recent advances in computation, and increasingly capable sensors and actuators.

Stay tuned for our next article; we’ll be demystifying the latest robotics technologies and looking at why robotics is still really difficult.

The ten-part series on European Robotics will be published every two weeks on the SPARC website and Robohub. Funding for the series was provided by RockEU – a Coordination and Support Action funded under FP7 by the European Commission, Grant Agreement Number 611247.