Work safe with your next-gen bot

Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is putting together safety guidelines for robots that will work in fields like nursing, cleaning and security. They call for soft robot bodies and emergency shutoff functions to prevent harm to stray humans. Legal liability in robot accidents is also being considered. The guidelines should be complete by the end of this year.

Floor-cleaning robots like the Subaru RFS series made by Fuji Heavy Industries are already on the job in high-rise office towers in Japan. But they only deploy at night, when no one is around. They take the elevator from their daytime storage space and quietly work the corridors in the dark, automatically following their internal maps of the building. Then they ride the elevator again and go back to sleep in their room.

An outdoor version of these, the Subaru Robohiter RS1, was deployed at the 2005 Aichi Expo. An all-weather, rain- and dust-resistant drone, the RS1 has a GPS antenna and triangulation sensor to determine its location as well as a bumper and obstacle sensor to steer clear of objects. The robots working at the Expo could sweep an area of 3,600 square meters per hour along the elevated Global Loop. But it was more fun to watch the kids lining up and posing next to them for photos.