Do Service Robots Need a Driving License? [Industrial Activities]

INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITIES

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Do Service Robots Need a Driving License? By Pericle Salvini, Cecilia Laschi, and Paolo Dario

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rom 15 June to 7 August 2010, DustCart, an autonomous robot designed for door-to-door garbage collection [1], was employed to carry out its service in Peccioli, a small Italian village in the province of Pisa, Tuscany. (The DustCart robot was originally developed in the framework of the European Union funded project DustBot.) The robot, 1.60-m high and with a bin capacity of 80 L, was the object of a field test carried out to evaluate not only its

Peccioli

Figure 1. Peccioli, Italy: 43°330 N 10°430 E.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2011.941628 Date of publication: 14 June 2011

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technical performance but also the usability of the service provided, cost of the service, and users’ acceptance of the robot in view of the possible production of the system at industrial level and its application [2]. (The field test was carried out by RoboTech Srl and Dedalus SpA in collaboration and with the support of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Belvedere SpA and the Municipality of Peccioli.) On the whole, the results obtained from the field test were satisfactory,

both for what concerns the technology used (i.e., dependability, reliability, and robustness), usability of the service provided (i.e., door-to-door rubbish collection on demand), and robot’s social acceptance (i.e., the users’ willingness to use the robot). This suggests that the day when it will be possible to deploy robots in public settings is closer than ever. However, we quickly recognized that one of the major challenges to overcome was not technological shortcomings or human beings’ resistance toward robots but rather legal and safety regulations. At the moment, there are no safety standards or safety certification procedures for robots such as DustCart, which operate in environments characterized by the presence of people and cars. The French company RoboSoft can be taken as a case in point. They develop and sell driverless vehicles for public transport services. However, the company’s online catalog states, “For certification reasons, Cybernetic Transport Systems are not yet available on public roads, only in private sites” [3]. However, the situation about robot safety seems likely to change very soon. Indeed, the International Standard Organization Technical Committee on robots and robotic devices is working on new safety standards for personal care robots, which will be released in 2012 [4]. Nevertheless, even when safety standards are available and implemented, there will be another challenge to be faced by autonomous robots, namely, legal regulations. In

• particular, for service robots using public roads, there exists a problem of classification with respect to the road traffic. In Europe, Article 8 of the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic (1968) states that each moving vehicle, including animals, shall have a driver. The lack of a human driver prevents autonomous robots from being classified as vehicles and opens new scenarios over the liability in the case of accidents caused by autonomous vehicles: who is responsible? Such a situation makes the deployment of autonomous vehicles in public roads problematic. Because of this normative void, to carry out the field test in Peccioli, it was necessary to take the following measures: from the technological viewpoint, to use state-of-the-art solutions for the robot, share intelligence between the robots and environment (Ambient Intelligence), and remotely supervise the robots operation; from the normative viewpoint, to restrict the robot circulation to a dedicated part of the road, which we called the robot lane (which was necessary to avoid traffic congestion), set up dedicated road signs for warning road users of the presence of the robot, increase the number of traffic police on the roads during the robotic service periods, insure the robots against any kind of damage they could cause, and finally inform and rely on the Municipality of Peccioli to assume the residual criminal and civil liability, which they accepted without problems. In conclusion, among the major challenges facing service robots in public settings, such as finding a killer application, reducing social resistance, optimizing technological and economic solutions, and producing dedicated safety standards, providing robots with a driving license should also be added.

Figure 2. A working day for DustCart robots. The yellow line marks the robot lane. The new road signs used for the field test (“Attention. Area subject to robotic testing. Yellow lane used by robots”). [3] (2011, Mar.). [Online]. Available: http://

[4] ISO TC 184/SC 2/WG 7. (2011, Mar.).

www.robosoft.com/eng/sous_categorie.php?id=

[Online]. Available: http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_

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technical_committee.html?commid=54138

References [1] (2011,

Feb.).

[Online].

Available:

http://www.dustbot.org/index.php?menu=video [2] (2011, Feb.). [Online]. Available: http:// www.robotown.eu/experiments.htm

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