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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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.