EU views and strategy for the future of advanced robotics

In the last five years, the European Commission dedicated particular attention to the definition and development of several activities to make EU "a knowledge-based society". This choice has been also confirmed during the definition process of the 7th Framework Programme (7FP) increasing significantly EU spending on research. Nine main research themes have been preliminary defined and among them, at least three can represent an important opportunity for robotic research: (1) health; 2) information and communication technologies; (3) nanosciences and nanotechnologies. In particular, we think that well-established global communication networks can increasingly integrate also robotics and mechatronics technologies establishing a new paradigm which can be defined as "ubiquitous robotics" going far beyond the well established and broadly accepted notion of the Web as an infrastructural communication network serving the global community as well as the single individual. This new envisaged scenario provides "augmentation" to individual users and to communities in a broad sense and in different situations.