Towards Robotic Things in Society
It addresses societal implications of widespread robotic automation, but is incremental as it primarily discusses existing ideas without new solutions.
The paper discusses the vision of a society saturated with Internet-connected robotic things (IoRT) in public spaces, exploring aspects like drone entourages and governance, but does not present specific results or numbers.
Emerging are so-called smart things embedded with computational, sensing, networking and actuation capabilities, from smart bins to smart park benches, as well as the proliferation of autonomous vehicles and robots in an increasingly wide range of applications. This is not only an increased in automation affecting and hopefully improving daily life, but also calls for thinking about what a society saturated with such robotic things (i.e., smart things and robots) might look like. This paper discusses five aspects of a vision of Internet connected robotic things (or Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT)) occupying and operating in public spaces, from streets, parks to shopping malls. We discuss, highlighting issues, with the notion of an entourage of drones and robots accompanying people in public places, the idea of creating environments or envelopes suitable for robot function, the idea of societies of robotic things, and governance for robotic things in public spaces.