From medical technology to retail
Prof. Dr. Stefano Stramigioli from the University of Twente in the Netherlands and Wolfgang Ptacek from the Austrian Center for Medical Innovation and Technology made it clear in their presentations that assistance and service robotics is by no means just about a few technical gimmicks. Whether in breast cancer diagnosis, autopsies or neurosurgery: many medical disciplines, but above all the patients concerned, will benefit from robotic solutions in the coming years, as interventions will be more precise and gentle and diagnostics will also be optimized thanks to artificial intelligence.

Dr. Nikolaus Blümlein from the German Lidl Foundation presented a completely different field of application for service robotics, namely the grocery discounter. The challenge here: Robots have to cope with the special conditions of the stores when they have to restock shelves, dispose of cardboard boxes or pack purchases at the checkout. What has already been implemented in structured large warehouses with transport platforms is to be extended to the retail sector in the future. A study at the Danish Technological Institute (DTI) at the end of the company tour showed how this can be achieved.

Similar to the PC, robots will gradually open up different fields of application in the future and make applications possible that were previously unthinkable.

The participants were given an insight into current research projects during the company tour at the Danish Technological Institute (DTI). © Schunk

Artificial intelligence as a driving force
There have been interesting developments, particularly on the software side, but also mechanically. This was demonstrated by the presentations by Prof. Dr. Jan Peters from the University of Darmstadt, Martin Naumann from drag and bot, Dr. Klas Nilsson from Cognibotics, Prof. Michael Beetz from the University of Bremen and Prof. Jamie Paik from the Reconfigurable Robotics Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne. All five specialists highlighted approaches on how service robots can be intuitively programmed and mechanically optimized using various artificial intelligence methods.

The goal: easy-to-use service robots for "do-it-yourself automation", as Martin Naumann described it. Similar to kindergarten or elementary school, service robots should observe, imitate and optimize their own movement sequences in simulation environments over the three stages, learn, train and then adapt to new requirements in the real world on the basis of the acquired knowledge base. However, it should also be noted that many mechanical challenges will still need to be solved in the future, for example the interplay of force, precision and speed when robot arms or grippers are moved in the immediate vicinity of humans or the flexibility and versatility of the gripping tools.

Safety and personal responsibility
Dr. Walter Wohlkinger from Blue Danube Robotics in Austria and Thomas Pilz, Managing Partner of sensor specialist Pilz, shed light on the safe interaction between humans and robots. Two things became clear: there are many ways to implement safe applications for human-robot collaboration, from sensor skin for robots and motion sequence control to sensor-supported spatial and gripping force monitoring. But humans will also have to adapt to the robot's behavior. Thomas Pilz therefore advocated adapting the applicable standards to developments in service robotics and critically questioning when and to what extent technical safeguards or user instructions make sense.

Aiming for global attention
Finally, Jeff Burnstein from the Association for Advancing Automation, Oliver Stahl from Robotise and Niels Jul Jacobsen from Mobile Industrial Robots provided an economic and ethical perspective on service robotics. China, the USA and Europe are now involved in the field of service robotics, with different priorities and implementation strategies. Jeff Burnstein, for example, was of the opinion that it is no longer decisive who has a new technology first, but rather who uses the technology most effectively and generates global attention. When it came to the question of ethics, Oliver Stahl believed that it was the human being, not the robot, who decided what to do with the technology.

There is still a lot of homework to be done for the success of service robotics, especially in terms of intelligence, security, mapping, clouds and standardization, but also with regard to ethical issues. as