Roboethics - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 75

The time required to resolve the technical problems will make time available for us
to consider these ethical issues and make decisions as to what types of robots we
want in the future and probably even more important what types of developments
we do not want and should not initiate. However, it is still open to question whether
we will have the sense to do this rather than proceeding indiscriminately with all
possible developments.

3.1 Industrial Robots

Current development trends in Europe include robots for small and medium
enterprises (SMEs), some of which could make use of simple, fl exible and cheap
automation solutions based on robots. However, cost is an important issue for all
SMEs and particularly for the smaller fi rms. Reliability and ease of maintenance
will also be important, since SMEs are unlikely to have teams of technical people
able to repair malfunctioning robots. Safety is another very important issue, since
the robots may be in closer proximity to workers than is common in industrial
practice and their users may include 'white collar' workers unused to working with
equipment. There will probably be a need for very fl exible and multifunctional
robots as well as cooperative robots. Fulfi lling all these specifi cations at low cost
will be a considerable challenge. Approaches based on modular metamorphic robots
(see Sect. 2.2 ) could be interesting, but the cost would need to be very signifi cantly
reduced to make them affordable.

3.2 Mobile Robots

Technological advances and the maturing of several technologies will facilitate the
development of cheaper, faster mobile robots which are able to follow trajectories
more accurately. These development include the following:

1. Developments in cognitive architectures and contextualisation which have
enabled the development of context-based systems and customisation.
2. Major advances in processing technology and miniaturisation, allowing signifi -
cant processing power to be included on pocket-size devices.
3. The development of smartphones with Bluetooth, Wifi and GPS.
4. The development of high-precision sensors.
5. Simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) algorithms.
6. The development and improvement in accuracy of GPS-based navigation and the
development of systems of multifunctional environmental information beacons.
7. The development of smart and lighter-weight materials and miniaturisation of
components, facilitating the development of smaller, lighter and more attractive
robots.