The EU has financed $ 2.16 million project called Phriends ( “Physical Human-Robot Interaction: Dependability and Safety”). The technology developed in this project will use both the development of industrial robots to help people (physical rehabilitation, sports, health …). The aim of Phriends is to create a new generation of robots that are safe and versatile for interacting with humans.

The project coordinator Antonio Bicchi said “we are still far from what we see in science fiction films, most current robots can only operate safely in different environments than humans. […] The classical approach robotics is to design and build robots with a specific task in mind. Phriends robots will be developed by insurance, since security is guaranteed by its own physical structure and not by external sensors or algorithms that can fail. “