Do you have a robot at home already?
Bernard Vicens: Not yet. I’m thinking about getting a robotic lawnmower in the future.

What makes robotics so exciting for you as an electronics distributor?
B. V.: First of all, robotics remind me – and probably all of us – of science-fiction movies and novels I saw and read when I was young … which sometimes can be scary! In the scope of our business, we are still at the very early phase, but applications are across all market segments. Also requirements are huge in terms of computing power, power management, security, sensors, human-machine interfaces and communications, so soon this market will become strategic.

Which components does EBV offer for robots?
B. V.: We have solutions for all the technologies listed above. Moreover, our portfolio is expanding, particularly with new sensor technologies.

Where do you see the most exciting market for robots at present?
B. V.: I think the home assistant robot market is the next big thing, with voice recognition such as Amazon Echo or Google Home. We will soon see a similar approach with mobile robots addressing various home applications like child-care, entertainment, security, comfort …

Do you have any “favourite projects” that you have seen recently?
B. V.: Well, there are several interesting projects. For example the NemH2O. This swimming pool robot is able to stay in the water forever, thanks to high-power induction charging. Another favourite is Wiigo, an autonomous, self-driven shopping cart designed to follow people with or without reduced mobility in supermarkets. Then there is Keecker, a smart multimedia robot that moves throughout the home to bring entertainment, communication and security to each room. Another exciting project is Buddy, an open-source companion robot that connects, protects, and interacts with each member of a family.

The field of robotics is currently making giant strides in development. Which technologies or trends are largely “responsible” for this in your view?
B. V.: The improvement that voice recognition has recently made is greatly facilitating interaction between humans and robots. For example, it is possible to embed a voice trigger in your application – you just have to utter a “key word” to wake up a system. And the Cloud provides unlimited capacities to manage sophisticated voice recognition – there is virtually no limit to the performance of voice recognition.

Which aspects of robotics do you find particularly exciting at the moment?
B. V.: Human-machine interfaces are really improving. Again, voice recognition will definitely simplify our interaction with robots, but the fact that robots are interacting ever more closely with humans – for example as care robots – means that very strict safety processes must be implemented. Which reminds me of the three laws of Isaac Asimov …

A Tesla causes an accident because it cannot differentiate a jack-knifed lorry from a bridge. A security robot knocks over a child in a shopping centre. Are robotic systems really advanced enough that they can be used in day-to-day tasks?
B. V.: Obviously, your examples show that safety rules for robots still need improvement. However, if we use a larger-scale comparison, we might want to check how many accidents were avoided by an autonomous driving Tesla as opposed to human driving. Don’t forget that a robot is able to react in a thousandth of the time a human takes.

Many of the robots presented in the magazine have been developed by start-ups. Is the market for robot applications a start-up market?
B. V.: Maybe established industrial companies are under-represented in the magazine? But yes, innovation is, as usual, coming from start-ups. Nevertheless, I expect big consumer players such as Samsung and LG to bring similar products onto the market soon.

It is evident that there are many company founders among them who originated from the target market – for example, agriculture or security – but who had never previously had anything to do with electronics, sensors or artificial intelligence. How can EBV help them to successfully realise their robotic visions?
B. V.: There is a similar situation in the IoT market. Our main goal is to turn our customer’s ideas into reality. Of course, we are offering the right electronic component solutions, thanks to our best-in-class sales organisation that includes specialist engineers, but we also provide the complete ecosystem including partners that can offer hardware, software design support, manufacturing, and so on.

Can EBV also offer something to experienced robotics manufacturers beyond mere components?
B. V.: As I said earlier, we are offering a complete ecosystem. In fact, in some cases we can also create awareness for our customers and give them an idea of potential additional ­business.

There is a wide range of different technologies in the field of navigation and environmental recognition in particular. How can the right solution be identified among them?
B. V.: It really depends on the application context. First, we need to differentiate outdoor applications where a GPS signal can be used. Then some technologies, such as radar, offer longer-range detection. In some cases, infrared Time-of-Flight sensors are adequate. In other cases, motion detection and magnetometer MEMS can help to determine position and orientation. I strongly believe customers will often combine technologies to gain the best solution for their system. Especially be aware that autonomous cars will in the near future combine at least three different technologies to determine their position.

From your point of view, which regions or countries are currently leading the way in the development of new robots?
B. V.: The United States, Korea, France, Denmark, Germany and Italy are countries with many activities and companies. Moreover, in those countries universities and public institutions are also driving the market by investing in specific programmes and events.

Which markets or industries are particularly exciting in terms of robotics at the moment? How will this develop in the future?
B. V.: Home service robotics could really improve our day-to-day life. With multiple applications, such as taking care of children and elderly people, or entertaining the family. When we add appropriate sensors, robots could even check air quality and control comfort and – why not – switch off appliances to save energy if we forget.

Do you believe that we will all have a robot at home one day?
B. V.: Yes, definitely.

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In 10 years at the latest, there will be robots in every area of our lives,” asserts Roger Seeberger, CEO of Jinn-Bot. “In the past, robots worked only in static settings, now we are seeing them progress to dynamic environments,” Seeberger continues. “It all started with the collaborative robots from Universal Robots, but nowadays it extends even further. In Switzerland, for example, the assistance robot Pepper from Softbank Robotics is deployed to accompany customers around supermarkets.”

Focus on collaboration

Lasse Kieffer, who worked at Universal Robots until a year ago, illustrates the trend by quickly sketching out a pyramid: “Initially – at the top of the pyramid – robots were mainly used in the automotive industry. Having proved themselves in that environment, they expanded into other sectors,” Kieffer adds, drawing his pen down towards the pyramid’s base. “Collaborative robots then enabled still wider applications, in which conventional robots had not previously been viable. That trend will continue, and the capabilities of collaborative robots will expand further.” For Kieffer, who is currently preparing to launch his own business, it is a natural development that is creating an ever increasing market for robotics applications. Dr Claus Lenz, Co-founder and CEO of Blue Ocean Robotics Germany, also believes that collaboration is the key word in relation to the ongoing development of robots. He sees three trends: “Firstly, robots and humans are coming ever closer together in industrial manufacturing. Secondly, we are also seeing that convergence in our day-to-day lives – with robotic vacuum cleaners and personal assistance robots for example. And thirdly, robots will start to collaborate more closely among themselves – multiple robots with different capabilities working together to perform a shared task.“

“The robotic sector now has technologies at its disposal that did not yet exist just a few years ago”
Jim Welander, System Field Applications Engineer, EBV Elektronik

Ever easier to control

Jim Welander, a Field Application Engineer for EBV Elektronik in Denmark specialising in support to robotics firms, sees developers of new robotics solutions also benefiting from advances in areas such as consumer electronics and the automotive sector: “As a result, the robotics sector now has technologies at its disposal that did not yet exist just a few years ago.” Moreover, robots are becoming ever easier to control, as Welander points out: “In earlier times you needed a degree in engineering to program a robot. Today it is something that every child learns in school – in Denmark at least.” People are generally becoming increasingly comfortable in the use of high tech. “Young people have no problem with it at all,” Roger Seeberger agrees. “But for older people it’s different. It will take a generation until they are also able to handle robots.” Claus Lenz disagrees. For him it’s just a question of usability. “If we can build a robot with a naturalistic interface, that is easy to understand, we will be able to integrate robots into older people’s lives too.” Roger Seeberger is entirely in agreement with that view – as long as the robot is working flawlessly. “But we are not yet currently advanced enough for non-technical people to deal with a malfunctioning robot.” Dr Lenz does not see that as an obstacle however: “When a dishwasher stops working, we call a service engineer. The same could happen in future with home robots. It might even create a new business model …”

Prices of the required electronics will fall

But how far can collaboration between humans and machines really go? “As far as a sex robot,” Lasse Kieffer asserts. Though Claus Lenz poses the question of what exact “collaboration” means: “Would the robot ­merely respond to people? Then we’re talking more about interaction. Genuine collaboration would mean ­people and robots pursuing the same goals.” But it will be a while yet before such robots actually appear on consumer markets. “The technology for collaborative, mobile systems already exists today, but it is still too expensive for domestic users,” says Jim Welander. The necessary sensors, such as laser scanners and lidar systems, as well as high-tech electric motors, are major cost drivers of multi-functional mobile assistance robots, which various forecasts estimate will be as much as 25,000 dollars. Yet it is precisely the advances in consumer electronics and the applications of electronics on this mass market that will drive down prices of electronic components dramatically in the years ahead. That is something all the round table participants agree on. Lasse Kieffer points out that the automotive market will also ensure the availability of cheaper systems for sensing the environment around robots for example: “The trend towards ever more autonomous cars will see increasing numbers of systems such as lidar and radar being fitted. That will ultimately make them cheaper for use in robots.”

“The ISO/TS 150GG technical specification standard for collaborative robots itself took six years to get published.”
Lasse Kieffer, ISO expert and future entrepreneur

Robots are becoming part of the Internet of Things

“But there will be no single robot capable of performing every task in the near future,” states Claus Lenz. “Rather, we will have specialised small-scale devices in our homes that are able to interact.” The Blue Ocean Robotics CEO foresees a combination of physical machines and smart Internet of Things (IoT) devices which will communicate with each other and share tasks among themselves. “Robots might provide a way of interlinking the digital and real worlds.” Roger Seeberger agrees: The training robots his company builds can be controlled on a smartphone using an Android app for example. “The boundaries between IoT devices and robots are now historical; they no longer exist today in fact.”
But that fact entails not only advantages – because robots are exposed to the same risks over the Internet as any other connected device. Cybersecurity is thus also an issue for robot developers too – or at least it should be. “Even though current robots actually process their data locally, and the Cloud is only used to distribute it, the same security standards should apply to the Internet connection as for a PC or a mobile device. That also includes regular security updates, which is an area where the robotics industry still needs to raise further awareness,” Claus Lenz warns.

Simulating the human brain

Cybersecurity is just one of the challenges that modern robots have to confront however. Another is intelligence: robots need it to move around an unfamiliar environment, or in order to communicate with people. That is not a problem in terms of the electronics, in Jim Welander’s view: “Chips featuring processor cores offering sufficient computing power for artificial intelligence are increasingly coming onto the market. The problems will rather lie in the software and related algorithms.” Claus Lenz stresses that for the time being, systems first have to be developed to interconnect different knowledge sources, and to combine machine learning with the data. Properly functional voice recognition also requires a certain level of intelligence, as the Blue Ocean CEO goes on to explain: “Context is key, because spoken words can have different meanings.” But it will doubtless be years before a robot actually acquires human-like intelligence. Roger Seeberger is convinced that robots which develop their own consciousness will most likely be created more by chance than anything else: “We don’t yet know much about our thought processes, so there is a lot of speculation, and a variety of theories and methods are being tried out. I suspect that at some point someone will suddenly say: oh, there it is! I believe it is much more important to consider whether we really should have robots with their own consciousness – but that is more of a political question.”

“The standards for secure internet connections should also be applied to robots.”
Dr. Claus Lenz, Co-founder and CEO, Blue Ocean Robotics

Machine safety also necessary for robots

As robots become more intelligent – or rather, become more autonomous – new challenges are also arising with regard to the safety of people and of the environment in which the robots operate. “Artificial intelligence is about making autonomous decisions that are hard to predict,” comments Welander. “But in order to build a safe robot you must be able to predict how it will behave in given situations.” There are of course also regulations governing robots within the machine and functional safety standards drawn up by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), as Lasse Kieffer explains: “There are committees covering industrial robots, as well as non-medical personal care robots, and service robots – including robotic vacuum cleaners for example. But the standards being developed will be very wide-ranging and generalised.” Kieffer worked intensively on the subject of functional safety for collaborative robots during his time with Universal Robots, and also attended relevant ISO meetings. So he knows that it normally takes several years for an ISO standard to be agreed and adopted – which means it might well have by then already been ­overtaken by new technology. That does not mean that robots not conforming to the standards are unsafe, as he stresses: “Nevertheless, the standards are helpful in designing new, safe robots.” He sets out his recommendation for how to build a truly safe robot with artificial intelligence: “There will be a number of simple safety features ensuring that the robot can be turned off.”

Improved understanding between humans and robots

An off-switch of such a kind is the simplest example of an human-robot interface. But our future mechatronic helpers will have much more complex solutions at their disposal for communicating with people and understanding their commands. “Present-day programming solutions for industrial robots are not an option for use in the domestic sector,” says Claus Lenz. “We need systems by which a robot can learn based on gestures, imitation, or speech.” Context-specific understanding of language will be key. Moreover, studies conducted by Blue Ocean Robotics have determined that being able to predict robots’ movements is important for trouble-free collaboration between robots and people. “If a robot’s movements simulate those of a human, and are not technical, the person concerned is more likely to grasp where an object is being passed for example,” Lenz explains. However, Roger Seeberger believes that it will not just be about robots adapting to human communication: “Living with robots will also alter the way we communicate – you only have to think about the impact smartphones have had on our communications.”

“There will one day be robots with their own consciousness.”
Roger Seeberger, Managing Director and Developer, Jinn-bot

The world of work will change

Robots will not only change our communication habits; they will also have an enormous impact on the world of work. “There have been numerous studies on the subject,” Claus Lenz reports. “A recent survey by McKinsey predicts that there will inevitably be changes as a result of increasing automation. But the use of robots will not necessarily lead to job losses; in fact, new jobs might be created. What kind they will be is not yet foreseeable – perhaps a robot’s safety assistant?” It is an idea that Lasse Kieffer likes: “Then we will not have robots assisting us, but people assisting robots!” Jim Welander is also optimistic, recalling the changes brought about by smartphones: “Just consider how many people are working in app development today – a job that no one would have dreamt of a few years ago.” Roger Seeberger expects to see much more profound effects on the world of work however: “It is essentially an ethical and political question, because we are going to have to reshape our society.” As one example, he cites the unconditional basic income, on which a referendum was held in Switzerland in 2016. “In future, the quality of work will no longer be expressed in hours, but in the extra time that people have to be creative.” Of course new technologies such as robotics entail risks, as Claus Lenz concurs: “People are naturally worried that their lives are going to change. But we can either worry about technology destroying our life, or we can work to ensure technology brings positive change to it.”

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Speedy no longer knows what to do. The nimble robot has been sent to gather the urgently required raw material selenium on the planet Mercury, yet this entails huge risks to his very existence. On the other hand, he wants to obey orders given to him by humans. The conflict between the laws governing his behaviour is just too much to take, causing Speedy to go haywire. He recites Gilbert and Sullivan and drives around and around in circles. Only when his human handler risks his life in front of Speedy’s eyes can the robot’s electronic brain think clearly again: after all, Speedy must obey the First Law at all costs.

• A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
• A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Ethical questions are becoming relevant today

Isaac Asimov cemented his place in history with this scene from his short story “Runaround”, published in 1942. Over the years that followed, numerous authors and film-makers took inspiration from the Laws of Robotics laid down for the first time in the short story and used them as a basis for creating their own works of fiction. Asimov’s ideas are not purely the stuff of fiction, but attracted a great deal of interest from researchers from the fields of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence – and continue to do so. Even today, the Three Laws serve as a fundamental code of practice for developers when programming their robots. “With the impending arrival of the first autonomous robots in the midst of our society, certain ethical questions that science-fiction author Isaac Asimov first formulated as his famous Laws of Robotics in 1942 will become very relevant – for example, whether a robot may kill or injure humans,” says Philipp Schaumann from website Sicherheitskultur.at. He also gave a lecture on the topic of “Ethics for autonomous vehicles” at the IT-Security Community Xchange symposium in late 2016.

From biochemist to author

Yet it wasn’t just the relationship between humans and robots that occupied Asimov, who was born on 2 January 1920 in Petrovichi, Russia. Among his bibliography of over 500 books, there are numerous scientific works on physics, chemistry and other natural sciences, yet also books on the Bible, William Shakespeare or Greek and Roman history. Asimov was a scientist by vocation, after all. After emigrating to the USA with his family at the age of three and growing up in Brooklyn, he studied chemistry at Columbia University and gained his Doctorate in Biochemistry in 1949. The scientist first came into contact with the American science-fiction scene while it was still in its infancy during his studies. He published his first short story in 1939, yet only became a full-time author in 1958, giving up his position as a lecturer at Boston University in order to dedicate himself fully to his writing.

Spotlight on the conflict between technology and ethics

The “Foundation” trilogy was one of Asimov’s most successful works. In this science-fiction series played out on a galactic scale, Asimov tells how a scientist succeeds in predicting and guiding the development of humanity for millennia using so-called “psychohistorics”. Asimov combined this trilogy with his many robotics and Galactic Empire novels to form a comprehensive series about the emergence of a new civilisation in outer space.
The conflict between technology and ethics is one theme which is common to all of his novels and short stories. It wasn’t just Asimov’s preoccupation with futuristic technology that came to the fore in his stories about robots, but also the effects of this technology on human society – and the dilemmas that this might bring about.

EU Parliament demands legislation on robots

A press statement from the European Parliament released at the start of 2017 shows just how far ahead of his time Asimov really was. In it, delegates call on the EU Commission to submit legislation concerning robotics and artificial intelligence. “One option might be to assign robots the status of ‘electronic persons’, at least as far as compensation for damage is concerned,” reported Mady Delvaux in Luxembourg. It was she who formulated the report in question and submitted it to the Commission. The EU Parliament delegates propose that researchers and designers should have a voluntary ethical code of conduct for robotics in order to ensure that their actions comply with legal and ethical standards and that the design and use of robots respect human dignity.
Asimov foresaw this ambivalence between ethics and robotics: in his fictitious version of 2015, robots are indispensable helpers in the conquest of distant planets. On Earth, however, they are forbidden due to people’s fear of them.

(Picture Credis: United States Library of Congress; Unsplash: NASA)

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