Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Robotics4EU (Robotics with and for Society – Boosting Widespread Adoption of Robotics in Europe)
Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2022-06-30
The Robotics4EU (2021-2023) project aims to ensure a more widespread adoption of (AI-based) robots in healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food, and agile production. The core concept of the project is that the technological research and innovation must be driven by society by considering the societal impact that it has. Thus, Robotics4EU is advocating for the integration of the non-technological aspects such as ethics, legal, socioeconomic, data, privacy, gender to the technology development and involving the end-users, either citizens or professional users of robots to the process.
From January 2021 to June 2022 Robotics4EU project has performed the following activities:
SOCIETAL READINESS PLAN. This document has provided guidelines for the integration of responsible research and innovation principles into Robotics4EU activities as well as specific societal readiness levels goals for the future activities of the Robotics4EU (Responsible Robotics Maturity Assessment Model and robot solutions and business plans).
RESPONSIBLE ROBOTICS MATURITY ASSESSMENT MODEL. One of the first activities of the Robotics4EU project was to develop a Societal Readiness Plan. This helped us think critically about the broad concept of Societal Readiness Levels as they relate to robots in our four sectors. Robotics4EU will explore how the SRL scale can work in practice and advise robot makers about how specifically they can use it to improve their products, and thus, society as a whole. The Robotics4EU consortium has started to design a model for the assessment of robotics maturity. We expect the model to facilitate estimating to what extent a robot is ready to be accepted by society at large. The overall objective of the Maturity Assessment Model is to provide producers, end users, regulatory bodies, and other relevant stakeholders, with the capacity to assess the maturity of robots before and after their production. In this context, maturity refers to the societal readiness of robotics solutions, and it highlights to what extent the robot meets society’s ethical values and its economic, legal and social needs. The maturity score must be self-explanatory, but the score and the scoring procedure must be wisely designed so as to limit negative impacts on companies: the maturity score must rather be a reward and be economically realistic so as to maximize its uptake by industry.
ANLYSING THE NEEDS OF THE ROBOTICS COMMUNITY. To understand the needs of the #robotics community, we conducted an online survey that gathered 1232 responses from policy makers, the robotics community and general population from 15 countries. On top of that we had 60 interviews to deepen our understanding. The identified top concerns affecting the robotics uptake were technological unemployment (in socio-economic), safety (in ethics), surveillance (in data), harmonized regulation (in legal) and the lack of education (in education and engagement). When inquiring about robots’ acceptability, stakeholders tend to be of the opinion that industrial robots (non-collaborative) performing specific tasks are already widely accepted. The stakeholders considered that on the whole, the first hindrance towards integration of intelligent robots in society lies in their technological immaturity. Once such robots have proven their usefulness and efficiency in performing a task, a focus must be given on the absence of direct negative impact on the user (safety, privacy, understandability, etc.). Collaboration between the policymakers and the robotics community is limited in its productivity due to the lack of communication and also technical knowledge possessed by the policymakers. Common goals of boosting widespread adoption of robotics can only be reached by building networks and sharing objective information in universal terms understandable to all robotics community members, policymakers and the general public.
CONSULTING WITH CITIZENS. Next to the online survey performed, a citizen consultation with 742 citizens across Europe, USA and South-Korea was performed in November 2021. The consultation found that the participating citizens were generally positive towards robotics seeing that this technology can make life easier and more convenient for people overall. However, there were also widespread concerns, and the largest worries by far are military and defense robotics, robotics in healthcare, and robotics with a high level of artificial intelligence. Another worry throughout the consultation is that the advancement of robotics could increase unemployment and destabilize the job market. Further, the consultation found that the vast majority of participants believed that robotics should be subject to both limitations and regulation. A very relevant takeaway from the consultation was that 85% of the participants feel that it is important that citizens’ considerations are considered when developing and regulating robotic solutions. This speaks for the importance of citizen engagement though consultations like this one.
WORKSHOPS AROUND NON-TECHNOLOGICAL ISSUES IN ROBOTICS. To broaden and empower the responsible robotics community by transferring knowledge and sharing good practices about non-technological aspects of robotics and their impact 17 workshops with 810 participants were organized. The workshops covered non-technological aspects of healthcare, agri-food and inspection and maintenance robotics. On August 29, 2022 a conference “Responsible robotics: robots with and for society (RESP-R)” was organized as part of the IEEE RO-MAN conference.
ROBOSPOT PLATFORM. Robotics4EU has launched Robospot platform (https://www.robospot.org/). The developed platform aims to act as an online meeting point for the European high-level robotics community, containing good practices and providing stakeholders with advice about non-technological aspects of robotics with a focus on (AI-based) robotics. Collaboration with AI on demand platform and other projects will continue to find synergies.
Next the the activities described, Robotics4EU consortium has developed a virtual exhibition to introduce the robots currently available to increase the awareness of professional users and citizens.
SOCIETAL READINESS PLAN. This document has provided guidelines for the integration of responsible research and innovation principles into Robotics4EU activities as well as specific societal readiness levels goals for the future activities of the Robotics4EU (Responsible Robotics Maturity Assessment Model and robot solutions and business plans).
RESPONSIBLE ROBOTICS MATURITY ASSESSMENT MODEL. One of the first activities of the Robotics4EU project was to develop a Societal Readiness Plan. This helped us think critically about the broad concept of Societal Readiness Levels as they relate to robots in our four sectors. Robotics4EU will explore how the SRL scale can work in practice and advise robot makers about how specifically they can use it to improve their products, and thus, society as a whole. The Robotics4EU consortium has started to design a model for the assessment of robotics maturity. We expect the model to facilitate estimating to what extent a robot is ready to be accepted by society at large. The overall objective of the Maturity Assessment Model is to provide producers, end users, regulatory bodies, and other relevant stakeholders, with the capacity to assess the maturity of robots before and after their production. In this context, maturity refers to the societal readiness of robotics solutions, and it highlights to what extent the robot meets society’s ethical values and its economic, legal and social needs. The maturity score must be self-explanatory, but the score and the scoring procedure must be wisely designed so as to limit negative impacts on companies: the maturity score must rather be a reward and be economically realistic so as to maximize its uptake by industry.
ANLYSING THE NEEDS OF THE ROBOTICS COMMUNITY. To understand the needs of the #robotics community, we conducted an online survey that gathered 1232 responses from policy makers, the robotics community and general population from 15 countries. On top of that we had 60 interviews to deepen our understanding. The identified top concerns affecting the robotics uptake were technological unemployment (in socio-economic), safety (in ethics), surveillance (in data), harmonized regulation (in legal) and the lack of education (in education and engagement). When inquiring about robots’ acceptability, stakeholders tend to be of the opinion that industrial robots (non-collaborative) performing specific tasks are already widely accepted. The stakeholders considered that on the whole, the first hindrance towards integration of intelligent robots in society lies in their technological immaturity. Once such robots have proven their usefulness and efficiency in performing a task, a focus must be given on the absence of direct negative impact on the user (safety, privacy, understandability, etc.). Collaboration between the policymakers and the robotics community is limited in its productivity due to the lack of communication and also technical knowledge possessed by the policymakers. Common goals of boosting widespread adoption of robotics can only be reached by building networks and sharing objective information in universal terms understandable to all robotics community members, policymakers and the general public.
CONSULTING WITH CITIZENS. Next to the online survey performed, a citizen consultation with 742 citizens across Europe, USA and South-Korea was performed in November 2021. The consultation found that the participating citizens were generally positive towards robotics seeing that this technology can make life easier and more convenient for people overall. However, there were also widespread concerns, and the largest worries by far are military and defense robotics, robotics in healthcare, and robotics with a high level of artificial intelligence. Another worry throughout the consultation is that the advancement of robotics could increase unemployment and destabilize the job market. Further, the consultation found that the vast majority of participants believed that robotics should be subject to both limitations and regulation. A very relevant takeaway from the consultation was that 85% of the participants feel that it is important that citizens’ considerations are considered when developing and regulating robotic solutions. This speaks for the importance of citizen engagement though consultations like this one.
WORKSHOPS AROUND NON-TECHNOLOGICAL ISSUES IN ROBOTICS. To broaden and empower the responsible robotics community by transferring knowledge and sharing good practices about non-technological aspects of robotics and their impact 17 workshops with 810 participants were organized. The workshops covered non-technological aspects of healthcare, agri-food and inspection and maintenance robotics. On August 29, 2022 a conference “Responsible robotics: robots with and for society (RESP-R)” was organized as part of the IEEE RO-MAN conference.
ROBOSPOT PLATFORM. Robotics4EU has launched Robospot platform (https://www.robospot.org/). The developed platform aims to act as an online meeting point for the European high-level robotics community, containing good practices and providing stakeholders with advice about non-technological aspects of robotics with a focus on (AI-based) robotics. Collaboration with AI on demand platform and other projects will continue to find synergies.
Next the the activities described, Robotics4EU consortium has developed a virtual exhibition to introduce the robots currently available to increase the awareness of professional users and citizens.
By the end of the project, Robotics4EU aims to have information about non-technological aspects in robotics available for the community along with the model to measure the social maturity of the robots. We will finalise the set of workshops in the agile production area. The process of validation the robotics business ideas with professional end-users or citizens will be continued and co-creation workshops to test robotics solutions in application areas will be organised. A policy debate will be held and a ‘Responsible robotics advocacy report’ provided. The results from the project will be transferred to standardization bodies, a constant alignment of the project with ongoing standardization activities is performed. The project platform will be updated and D&C activities will be carried out to promote and popularize the platform and the virtual exhibition.