Contribution received to the FET Flagships consultation: Robot Companions for Citizens ++

Author(s): Paolo Dario on behalf of a wide community

Reporter: Paolo Dario - Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, The BioRobotics Institute

You can add your comments on this topic at:  https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/content/robot-companions-citizens

We believe that a new, science-based, transformative Robotics, is needed: this is the reason why we propose a RoboCom++ FET Flagship initiative. The ‘New Robotics’ will overcome current methods limitations and develop the cooperative service robots (or Companion Robots) of the year 2030. Today’s Mechatronic paradigm has serious limitations likely preventing the possibility of achieving an universal utilization of robotic systems. For example, system complexity increases with functions, leading to more than linearly increasing costs and power usage and decreasing robustness when more complex less structured task sets and environments are considered for applications.  It is necessary to pursue a novel more radical scientifically principled authentically biomimetic paradigm, grounded in the scientific studies of intelligence in nature, animals and plants. This approach will allow achieving complex functionalities with limited resources and energy usage with cheap, fast and effective control and computing. Such simplification mechanisms taken from the body of ideas of ‘embodied intelligence’, will have to explore and exploit such ideas as “morphological computation”, "simplexity", evolutionary and developmental approaches, integrated with a radically new bodyware, exploiting compliance instead of fighting it.

Read full text: https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/system/files/ged/fetflagshipsconsultati...

On line: https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/content/robot-companions-citizens

You can add your comments on this topic at:  https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/content/robot-companions-citizens