Robot companions for citizens possible EU megaproject

Robot companions for citizens is one of the other possible FET (future and emerging technology) Flagship initiatives (could get 100 million euro per year from 2013-2022)

Each of six projects is to get €1.5 million ($2.1 million) for one year, and late next year two of the projects will be selected as flagships, to be funded at about €1 billion each over a decade.

Robot Companions for Citizens is an ecology of sentient machines that will help and assist humans in the broadest possible sense to support and sustain our welfare. RCC will have soft bodies based on the novel integration of solid articulated structures with flexible properties and display soft behavior based on new levels of perceptual, cognitive and emotive capabilities. RCC will be cognizant and aware of their physical and social world and respond accordingly. RCC will attain these properties because of their grounding in the most advanced sentient machines we know: animals.

Human society faces a critical challenge: how to increase and maintain our quality of life in the future. Robot Companions -as a new class of technology- will offer a variety of roles to assist facing this challenge.

Sustainable welfare through sentient machines: technology that integrates perception, cognition, emotion, and action with a contextual awareness of self, others, and the environment.

The vision of Robot Companions is multidisciplinary, looking towards the understanding of the general design principles underlying bodies, brains, and minds. Binding together science, engineering, and society.

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