Sales Manager for robotic products
Fastems Oy Ab

Future robots – master or servant
Social Machines track, Fri Oct 8th at 11:50

Development of robot technologies is currently taking big steps. Evolution is happening in all four technology areas which are crucial for robotics: mechanical hardware, computing technology, controlling software and finally also general regulations. Robots are not anymore machines which must be arrested and separated from people. New safety regulations allow usage of software based monitoring and controlling systems enabling flexible and interactive safety interfaces between robot and operator. Combined with modern area scanning sensor technology it is possible to build totally new type of man-machine interfaces for robot applications. General trend of robot concept development is heading to equipment which will interact and work very closely with humans. Very soon there will be applications where robot system and human being will work together “hand-in-hand”. Designs will get shape and feeling finally very close to science fiction movies humanoids. All this development is very strongly supported by never ending development of computing hardware and artificial intelligence. These trends will inevitably lead in to the situation where we start to think, are we heading to fully independent autonomous machines which has capability to make decisions independently and finally have own will.. and become masters. Human role will in this case change upside down and will be servant to provide energy and material.


Mika Laitinen works for Fastems Oy Ab as sales manager for robotic products. He has graduated from Lappeenranta University of Technology and worked 20 years in robotics and robotics related software.

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