Who's Driving?The Current Future of Robotics

August 2015Tony Hirst

Department of Communication and Systems

The Open University

tony.hirst@open.ac.uk

“The robot was designed to be a talking travel companion and could toss out factoids and carry limited conversation.

“A GPS in the robot tracked its location, and a camera randomly snapped photos about every 20 minutes to document its travels.”

“Real” vs. “software”

robots

So the future remains bright

for (mechanical) engineers?

Autonomous Vehicles

Mor

e on

Ope

nLea

rn

“It is the first accident involving one of Google’s fleet of self-driving vehicles to have resulted in injury.”

“The Google car was stationary in a queue of traffic when it was hit by the vehicle travelling at 17mph, according to an accident report filed by Google.”

Service Robots

Logistics

Regulatory Brakes…

Who’s Paying?

http://www.automotivemanufacturingsolutions.com/focus/how-an-i3-is-born

Collaborative Robots

Human robot collaboration

Some Other Google Acquisitions

(Self-?)Regulation

“Starting a military AI arms race is a bad

idea, and should be prevented by a ban

on offensive autonomous weapons

beyond meaningful human control.”

So who’ll decide the future of robotics?

YOU WILL