Urban Robots to Improve Quality of Life

The EU is funding a 3 year study to design robots to improve the quality of life in European cities.
The URUS,Ubiquitous Networking Robotics in Urban Settings, project will study how to use a network of robots to make the old cities more liveable.

The project will concentrate on designing robots to interact with people in the city to help them in basic ways. They will design robots for assistance and giving directions. This will become more important as the population of the cities ages.
They will look at robots to automatically make deliveries around the urban core to reduce the need for motor vehicles.
And they will look at robots to help in security throughout the cities.
They anticipate that the network of robots will work in combination with fixed sensors - like cameras - and with PDA's and cell phones.

The biggest technologies to conquer, they expect, are the ability of robots to navigate independently and to be able to interact in a 'friendly' manner with people.

The proposed network of robots will be tested in a section of Barcelona probably not before 2008 or 2009.

The Engineer Online