Technology Trend “Environment-aware Robotics”

Robots with better eyesight than human being

The development of deep learning technology has improved image recognition accuracy year by year. In the international contest ILSVRC, a robot identified the name of an object in a presented image with 97.0% accuracy in 2016, as compared to the 94.9% for humans which it exceeded in 2015.

Furthermore, the development of cameras and sensors enables highly accurate capture of three-dimensional space. A representative is 3D space recognition technology called SLAM, which simultaneously estimates a robot’s own location and creates a map of its surroundings based on information from a camera or a sensor.

Yet another new technology allows the capture of a space with only a smartphone using a monocular camera, which will enable the effortless creation of indoor 3D maps. This technology will likely become widespread in many places like commercial facilities, warehouses or factories.

Popularization of robots focused on self-driving cars

Self-driving cars can be regarded as robots that autonomously operate while recognizing surrounding environments. It is also the robot that is garnering the most attention nowadays.

In 2016, the demonstration experiment of the self-driving buses and the experimental service of self-driving taxis on public streets were also started by several companies. In addition, the world’s first self-driving delivery truck ran an autonomous trial run on a 190 km stretch of expressway. Automatic delivery by self-driving trucks is expected to reduce the shortage of truck drivers, a problem in logistics that continues to increase due to the expansion of EC business. Robots are also spreading their working arena to commercial facilities, households and public spaces. For example, there are robots that utilize cameras and sensors to patrol the product display shelves to find out-of-stock products, wrong product placements or messy displays, etc. raising the potential for significantly reducing labor.

Also, in daily life, not only autonomous cleaners or communication robots, but also refrigerators that suggest recipes using ingredients in the cabinet and cooking robots have also appeared.

Realizing the advanced tasks and mass customization

In addition to automating simple tasks that humans have been doing so far, even advanced tasks that only experts were able to perform are now being automated. For example, in agriculture, a drone equipped with a camera and sensor that sprays pesticide only over areas where pests inhabit, or that adjusts the amount of fertilizer depending on the condition of crop growth in a particular area can perform tasks with a precision far higher than that of humans. In addition to eliminating labor shortages, it can also result in significant savings of pesticides and fertilizers.

An autonomous factory where based on data acquired from manufacturing machines or sensors as well as from sales and material procurement, a robot autonomously determines the necessary materials, most efficient manufacturing process and methods for coordinating with other machines; thus automatically changing production lines, may appear.

As a result, mass customization in which each product is customized for each individual user may become a reality.

Economic impact on robot popularization

Environment-aware robot

The global robot-related market is predicted to more than double from 91.5 million dollars in 2016 to 188 million dollars in 2020^(*1), with the competition of functions and pricing of robots increasing in the future.

In particular, the automotive industry will have a major turning point in the future. During the development phase of self-driving technology, the car’s driving performance is regarded as a major focus, but in the world where fully automatic self-driving cars are realized, driving performance becomes common and the transportation experience itself will become the determining factor. This means that the economic system shifts from selling goods to selling experiences and services.

Customers change from “people who want to own a car” to “people with transportation needs”, and companies that can provide advanced transportation experiences, in other words, companies that have a wide range of data and can provide new services, will create and lead the new market.

Official discussions on the Required Reform of the Legal System

Looking at the mid- to-long-term future, discussions are currently underway to impose a robot tax on owners under the assumption that robots are electronic humans. In addition, the introduction of basic income grants to all citizens in order to maintain a minimum standard of living has been much discussed, with experiments starting in Finland and San Francisco.

These discussions are assuming that social structures will significantly change with robots and AI replacing people at jobs. However, as with computers, new professions will emerge but different skills will be required. In addition to dealing with systematic policy adjustment of tax and living security, education programs needed to fill this skill gap will become important in the future.