Talk Details:

Strategic scenarios of social interaction in cognitive humanoid robots for industry

Fabio Puglia

Founder and President at Oversonic, Milan.

Abstract

The process of abandoning deterministic beliefs in industrial robotics is irreversible. A new concept has indeed emerged: robotic systems with social attitudes must complement human activities. Oversonic Robotics has been building and implementing social humanoid robots for the industrial sector for the past 3 years, combining the operativity and repetitiveness of an industrial machine with the features of a social machine based on an NPL system. The result is a UE-certified system with a Voice Bot and a humanoid aspect.

Nowadays, the real challenge is the integration of social robotics elements into these machines through a process that aims to develop their empathic and relationship skills, by reducing their configuration and programming complexity.

This process leads us to a re-definition of the work environment as we know it and to a transformation of the human-machine relationship from a static to a more authoritative and collaborative one.

Such a new generation of “relational machines” can transfer their own cycle awareness to the surrounding work environment, externalizing details, limits, and uncertainties of their daily productive cycle in a new form of evolved co-existence. This has its roots in robot ethology with the adoption of sustainable and bio-friendly solutions in terms of materials and activations, a scenario that has become a reality at last.

The work environment becomes a background for collaborative social action that results in a combined effort between humans and machine agents, two actors that are not isolated anymore.

By allowing men to disconnect from dangerous or claustrophobic activities, the role of robots is a good example of social sustainability that enables a new form of modern welfare.

The presentation focuses on practical use cases in the productive sector, mainly manufacturing, ranging from robots’ diversified pick and place activities to customer service assistance.