How will the Robotics Industry Evolve?
If Hollywood’s vision were correct, robotics in the future would represent a stark departure from today’s commercially available robots. Either they would be kindly but slightly eccentric servants (like R2D2 and C-3PO in “Star Wars”) or mendacious killers (like T-800s in “The Terminator”). Of course, Hollywood aims to entertain and not offer a strategic vision for the robotics industry. For that, we turn to two recently released, insightful documents: “Robotic Visions to 2020 and Beyond (The Strategic Research Agenda for Robotics in Europe)” and “The US Robotics Industry Roadmap, A Roadmap for US Robotics from Internet to Robotics”. (For purposes of this article, we refer to both documents as the “European Roadmap” and the “US Roadmap”.) Authored by leading experts from academia and industry, both documents provide strategic visions of the future that contrast sharply with today’s reality. Importantly, both visions are largely overlapping, despite opposing objectives, different approac
