Learning and walking with robots

ICT is one of Europe’s biggest research priorities. A total of €9.1 billion has been earmarked for the sector under the EU’s main research vehicle, the seventh research framework programme (FP7).

The emphasis is logical. The sector is expected to be a major job-making machine over the coming decades. Currently reckoned to be worth an estimated 6-8% of the EU’s gross domestic product, the importance of the sector stretches into other areas, boosting productivity throughout the economy, in both the public and private sectors.

The economic importance of the sector can only grow. Tomorrow’s information infrastructure is expected to link together billions of people, organisations and devices in an intricate network underpinning economic development across Europe. Research is intended to make infrastructure more robust and to ensure people in sectors as diverse as financial services and healthcare will be equipped to participate.

Special attention is being paid to the development of ICT-based infrastructures that will allow researchers to work more effectively together.

Supercomputers, genetic databanks and high-speed facilities will help create world-class research networks. Work in this area has already led to the development of GEANT, a multi-gigabit pan-European data network reserved for research and education purposes. GEANT is the world’s most powerful research network.

E-learning is an important component element of ICT research. Learning how effectively to manage the floods of information that are already a feature of the emerging knowledge economy is becoming an ever-more important skill. E-learning tools could help to revolutionise both the workplace and the environment.

Research money is being pumped into a number of promising technologies. 3D television, for example, of the holographic type depicting Princess Leia projected by droid R2D2 in 1980s film Star Wars, could soon become a reality under one of FP7’s network programmes (www.3dtv-research.org). Visitors at a research event hosted by the Finnish presidency in Helsinki last year were able to watch, and even walk through, a talking head.

R2D2 himself could also become a reality with robotics research being carried out under FP7’s walking with robots network (www.walking withrobots.org). Projects range from advanced industrial robot applications to the development of cognitive robots for the home. Of particular interest are robots that would be capable of exploring dangerous terrain, such as the edges of volcanoes, or outer space and robots engineered to simulate evolutionary learning processes to eventually become ‘intelligent’. "As robots become increasingly intelligent, humans will interact with robots in new and quite probably surprising ways," says the network’s website.

ICT is one of Europe’s biggest research priorities. A total of €9.1 billion has been earmarked for the sector under the EU’s main research vehicle, the seventh research framework programme (FP7).