Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Research on Network Robots in Japan is mainly led by the National Institute of
Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), which has developed a system
prototype in 2006, resulting from the combination of robotic techniques with IC tags, a
face authentication system and a network node using a middleware technique (RT
middleware), in a human living environment.
Figure 7.
Japan's general roadmap on robotics (2006)
A European approach to Ubiquitous Robotics: PEIS
The fusion of robotics and ambient intelligence is being explored from different
perspectives also in Europe. One example of a European approach to this process is the
concept of an Ecology of networked Physically Embedded Intelligent Systems, or PEIS
(Saffiotti, 2005). The PEIS Ecology is aimed at providing cognitive and physical
assistance to the citizens of the future, and helps them to live a better, safer and more
independent life.
The concept of PEIS Ecology draws together insights from the fields of ambient
intelligence and autonomous robotics to generate a radically new approach to building
assistive, personal and service robots. Most current approaches to building a “robot
companion” aim at building one isolated robotic device (often human-like) empowered
with extraordinary abilities for perception, action and cognition. By contrast, the PEIS-
Ecology approach redefines the notion of a robot to encompass the entire environment.
Perception and manipulation of objects are therefore replaced by direct communication
between subsystems in the environment. In the PEIS-Ecology vision, the robot would
disappear in the environment in the same way as computers should disappear according
to the well-known vision of ubiquitous computing.
