The Robotics Divide

Technology and power are closely intertwined. As the specialized literature demonstrates, technologies can reinforce processes of exclusion in contemporary societies or permit new strategies for social inclusion to be developed. This book examines a newly emerging technological divide: the robotics divide. Through an innovative and interdisciplinary theoretical approach, the different chapters of the book permit us to open the black box of technological development in a key area in which humans are creating an alter ego (the robot); a phenomenon which will redefine the distribution of power in societies of the twenty-first century.

Technology, power, and social change have always been closely interrelated. This chapter examines the complex relationship between technology and society, with particular attention to the assessment of science and technology policies in democratic societies. Our analysis of technological trajectories points to the need for a new social contract which, through prospective studies and trend analysis, permits us to forecast the new opportunities and new risks arising from the sociotechnical model in which we are immersed. We analyze the key role robotics technology will play in the coming years within this context and conclude the chapter with a definition of what we call the robotics divide.

In the last 30 years of the twentieth century and during the first years of the current one, most of organisations have been incorporating the so-called new information technologies to its processes and management methods. The incorporation of these technologies has caused deep changes in organisations, changes that appear to take place from outside to inside. The arrival of the digital economy represented for companies a new and growing business area, represented by the Internet, which broke new ground and new ways of relating to the environment, from the point of view of both suppliers and its relationships with other organisations, and from the standpoint of relationship with customers.

Tensions in the eurozone have brought back to the surface issues/criteria related to its solidity and optimality. We will suggest that technology and research can help buttress a monetary union, through their impact on trade and specialization and production structures. This applies to advanced adaptive systems, such as robotic systems that can be used in wide arrays of sectors to enhance performance and competitiveness. It can open the way for European economies to compete internationally by emphasizing their strong card, technology, as opposed to competing on labor cost. It can mitigate the tensions caused by divergent performances between members of a monetary union, through promoting convergence toward higher technological plateaus. This emphasis on technoeconomic convergence has a counterpart, in terms of technology and innovation policies, which can hardly compete globally on the basis of labor costs. The sovereign debt crisis has increased pressure on countries to redress structural problems in their economies, while preserving the margin for public investment in knowledge-based capital, in a “smart way,” contributing to productivity growth and competitiveness. Smart specialization, the concept and the associated policy process, aims to do just that, fostering growth potential in a context of rapid technological change and globalization. The rationale for smart specialization stresses the role of policymakers, knowledge-based institutions, and entrepreneurs in shaping specialization and competitiveness. Horizontal key enabling technologies, such as robotic technologies, play a particularly essential role in boosting existing strengths, as well as revealing new economic opportunities in sectors at various levels of technological sophistication.

New technological developments, as in other domains, provide the opportunity to enhance robots behavior. In this chapter, new promises and challenges of robotics are introduced. New robots are not only designed to work for humans to perform specialized, tedious, repetitive, or dangerous tasks, but also for working safely with them. A great variety of sensing modalities will be incorporated to new robots which will allow them to “understand” changing environments and to adapt their capabilities. Autonomous learning and adaptive behavior are essential when implementing robots for what to do rather than how to do it. New developments allow robots to be adapted to range over different areas as a result of using different means of locomotion, including walking, running, flying, swimming, or diving, so that they are capable of carrying out any type of work activity located at times in hostile environments impossible for humans. Science and engineering are ready to provide innovative solutions to some of the most common tasks of our society. In order to achieve this, objective efforts that crosscut many disciplines are needed.

Energy is an important driving force to our modern society. The coal and petroleum as energy sources are still widely used. However, these fossil fuels do not exist in an inexhaustible supply, making it necessary to explore other energy options. In this sense, research and development in alternative energy is becoming an area of growing interest worldwide. New investments in areas as robotics are critical to supply an efficient power generation and energy conversion and to deliver energy security meeting clean goals at the same time. This chapter presents three alternative energy options: solar energy, wind energy, and biological energy. In each case, advantages, disadvantages and the robotics role in the making ever-changing alternative more competitive are analyzed.

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the impact of long-term technological innovation in the home environment. We analyse the transformation that households may experience due to the increased use of technology. With respect to long-term technology forecasting and social applications, we are discussing conjecture and an acceptable level of probability; we consider speculative estimates of future technologies and the potential uses of these technologies by citizens. In recent years, the scientific literature relating to homes has discussed the home and intelligent building. The word “smart” has been supplemented by new concepts, such as the “aware” home, integrated environments or live, interactive environments. Similarly, there has been a significant change away from technocentrism and towards paying more attention to the person and a flexible relationship with technology, considering the great potential of technology to consider the real needs of users. We analyse the applications of microrobotics and macrorobotics in medicine. They have been grouped into the following areas: (1) robotic surgery or telesurgery, (2) prosthetics and orthotics and (3) care robots (robots for disabled people and the elderly, Hospital and Research Robots, Nanotechnology).The current technological innovations have a significant impact on shaping the personal and domestic environment. The new values of society, such as concern for the environment and sustainability, the importance of security, information workers or the growing importance of entertainment and leisure in the lives of people, are elements that guide the innovation process. We consider the problem of the digital divide. The state has an important role to play in the development of an inclusive social model that is based on a new way of organising technology. The divide between developing and developed countries and connected and disconnected communities could get deepened. The European model of transition to the knowledge society imposes some limitations on the prevention of a digital divide. The condition for the development of an inclusive knowledge society is education. The state must transform its traditional role, and it must be a provider of infrastructure for the self-organisation of civil society. Modern generations have a culture that favours the introduction of technology into their lives and perceive technology as an opportunity or an advantage rather than as a threat to our humanity. This is a critical factor, and it is a necessary condition to realise the potential of the scientific and technological revolution that characterises most advanced countries. Advances in medical biotechnology have placed us at a new stage. The medicine involved will be eminently predictive/preventive, and robotics and nanotechnology will play a major role.

In the field of dependency and personal autonomy, the new technologies play an important part. We analyze a technology which is already established in that field, the information and communication technologies (ICTs) (the main contribution of the chapter), and we reflect on the possible consequences, based on accumulated experience, of the introduction of advanced automation. Other writers investigate the digital divide and relate it to the future robotics divide. In this chapter, we reflect on the ICTs, on informal care, on personal autonomy and on the possible consequences or scope of application of automatic and robotized services systems.

This chapter explores the recent scholarship on the digital divide in order to draw useful lessons for the analysis of the robotics divide. We pay special attention to the evolution of the research on the digital divide, from early approaches to more recent trends. First, the persistent nature of the digital divide and the main sources of inequality are discussed. Then, an overview of the multifaceted and complex nature of the divide is provided. Particular attention is paid to (a) a new understanding of access, considering not only material but motivational access, (b) the relevance of the skills involved, and the different typologies available and (c) the importance of usage and user profiles when exploring social inequalities: the digital divide tens to appear smaller when actual use is not taken into account. Finally, some usual conceptual and methodological assumptions underlying most research on the digital divided are discussed and criticized.

In this chapter, we analyse the development of two key concepts that have attracted the attention of a great number of Information and Knowledge Society specialists: the Digital Divide and Digital Inequality. Both concepts refer to the inequalities resulting from the development of the Internet in contemporary societies. However, the former focuses on the citizens that use and do not use this medium, whereas the latter studies the inequalities resulting from the different uses of the Internet. Taking Spain as a case study, this chapter examines to what extent the Digital Divide has reduced, by means of a time series analysis, and, on the other hand, looks at a type of advanced Internet use, e-shopping, to analyse whether digital inequalities have reduced or not from 2004 to 2011. We use the concepts of normalisation and stratification to order the information resulting from our analysis and to predict the development of inequality in the Information and Knowledge Society.

In this chapter, we present the results of a prospective research study we have conducted over the last 10 years on development trends in the field of industrial and service robotics. Applying the scientific methods of prospective research and future studies, we have conducted Delphi studies to predict the main trends of development of robotics technology in key sectors. Our findings show that increasingly more areas of the industrial and service sectors will be automated. Using the data obtained, we develop a trend scenario that points to the emergence of a robotics divide in a context of increased hybridization between humans and machines; a divide which will redefine the meaning of power between individuals, groups, and countries in the twenty-first century.