Taiwan lab wants robots to be stronger than humans yet safe

The International Center of Excellence on Intelligent Robotics and Automation Research or iCeiRA Lab in Taiwan believes all robots should be co-robots—one that works safely beside people without posing any danger to them. Unlike the US "conformable" co-robots that are intentionally made weak, iCeiRA Lab's co-robots are designed to be stronger than humans to perform tasks people can't. Taiwan is confident that it can make co-robots that are stronger than people yet also safe to work alongside.

The iCeiRA Lab has a list of sponsors that reads like a Who's Who in the worldwide high-technology research industry, from Intel to Microsoft to MediaTek. The iCeiRA Lab also acts as a bridge between the National Taiwan University, which occupies 1 percent of Taiwan's island area and functions as a national teaching lab, and other respected robotics research centers worldwide.

For the iCeiRA Lab and its collaborators, co-robots that can operate alongside people is not some new concept but is already an essential part of every robot made (and the lab has made dozens of models, many of which have won international first place prizes). To the iCeiRA Lab, the US National Robotics Initiative, although better funded at $150 million from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency or DARPA supplemented earlier in December with an additional $37 million from the Department of Defense and which supports 66 research proposals from 47 institutions in 27 states, is wrong to make robots weak in order to make them safe.

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