Social Dependability: a proposed evolution for future Robotics

DOI 10.12910/EAI2014-63

Claudio Moriconi, Ramiro dell’Erba

This paper deals with a possible scenario that could become common in a future robotics-assisted society. Robot applications are affected by dependability, reliability, safety concepts owing to the intelligence and the autonomous capability of advanced robots not only to carry out tasks without any man intervention, but also to establish whether a task must be carried out or not, depending on a high level evaluation of the environmental context. The interaction among different robots and among them and the human society is likely to increase in the future; transient Robot Societies, whose behavior cannot be foreseen with the tools we have today, are expected to generate and will pose management problems. This will demand the development of a methodology able to define the degree of dependability of a robot. The following discussion tries to address this problem by putting some ideas on the table for a possible technological, but also scientific challenge

Claudio Moriconi, Ramiro dell’Erba - ENEA, Technical Unit for Advanced Technologies for Energy and Industry