Robots on the way into our everyday lives

Heinrich Arnold, head of Telekom Innovation Laboratories:"With the aid of model-driven path planning using augmented reality we can identify and prevent collisions."

Jun 22, 2016

Whether in manufacturing, driving cars, medical matters or at home – robots are entering every aspect of our lives. Deutsche Telekom's secure network and cloud make it possible.

In the near future, robots will become an essential part of our everyday lives. Although people still associate "robotics" with fixed, statically programmed sequences of movement – think of robots that build cars, for example – modern robots are becoming mobile, cooperative, learning-capable assistants for a wide variety of use cases: autonomous vehicles and transportation systems, service robots in the medical and care areas, personal robots for social interaction and robots as tireless household helpers are just a few examples.

Artificial intelligence

Technologically speaking, modern robots are becoming connected cyber-physical systems that are increasingly capable of autonomous activity. Due to the connection with other robots or machinery and with people, external services and IT resources the behavior of robots for completing a task can be optimized: access to databases and knowledge bases for example, enables decision-making processes that make robots able to identify new objects and grasp them safely. This is called artificial intelligence. This makes it possible to use robots flexibly in manufacturing or in the service domain. Robots will be able to share knowledge in future, letting them learn from one another and avoid repeating mistakes.

Intelligence from the cloud

Wireless networks like LTE and Deutsche Telekom's future 5G network, which will have especially short latency times, will enable secure, high-performance communications from and with robots. With Deutsche Telekom's cloud and IoT platforms, external data and services can be integrated in the robotics application; it also enables the offloading of resource-intensive robot control functions from the local system. "Intelligence from the cloud" can help manufacturers of service robots capture cost advantages, for example. Users will be able to equip their robots with "behavior modules", such as new voice controls, more easily and better integrate them in their environments.

Additional services

"In cooperation with research partners we are already working on shifting functions to the cloud and in doing so pay special attention to make it attractive to users," explains Heinrich Arnold, head of Telekom Innovation Laboratories. "With the aid of model-driven path planning using augmented reality, for example, we can identify and prevent collisions before deployment of the physical robot. App-based remote robot control, along with object identification based on artificial intelligence, are additional services from the cloud that we are currently implementing at the Deutsche Telekom robotics lab."