In our days there are a lot of challenges related to robots. We see more and more services to be provided by automated intelligent systems. Service robots nowadays, have a wide distribution across various service-oriented domains in integrated urban environments (IUE), and are defined and classified by international standards. They force a closer cooperation and integration between various technologies and artificial intelligence from one side, and business models for services provision and advanced user interfaces from another. The aim of this paper is to present a short review of the applied standards, the used classification of the service robots by their different types of usage, and of the challenges in front of service providers by providing services in IUE-Labin the frame of MIRACLe project, IT technologies and robot designers. Based on the provided definitions and classifications, then the different aspect affecting the adoption of service robots are discussed. The conclusion is that a continuous and stronger cooperation between the involved stakeholders is necessary in order to achieve higher quality, and trustworthiness of the service robots.
With the development of information technologies, technical and scientific research continue to interact more closely with business and services providers, towards automation of and aiming customer satisfaction service delivery. Such continuous change in the requirements shifts the focus from pure engineering to the fields of the development and integration with modern automated intelligent systems, including artificial intelligence (AI), sensor development, mobile ser vices and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Such interaction and integration between engineering, technology, and
machine learning, related to service delivery to end customers, is service robotics
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Following the processes automation and optimization, service robots assigned tasks become more accurate and efective when performing repetitive tasks, performed in the past by humans. Examples for such activities are assembly parts, handling, and transporting items, performing continuous recurring jobs etc. The past decade service robots’ developments indicated that service robots are constantly increasing their capabilities to process and deliver more service-oriented tasks and outcomes in more broad domains like medicine, navigation and guidance, human health care, front ofice operations. These services, in terms of providing them to the consumers in IUE in general, and in the frame of MIRACle project (https://miraclebg.com) IUE-Lab as concrete use cases, could be defined into three functionally independent groups: Intelligent Home Environment (IHE), Intelligent Public Environment (IPE) and Intelligent Personal Assistant (IPA).
However, deliverables, provided to service recipients and associated with more intuition, evaluation, judgment, previous experience, etc., are still could not be fully covered by robots. This means, that even with current technologies, service robots are not able completely to replace humans and provide services of the same quality as humans. On the other side, by supporting humans in delivering such services, in the contexts of future development of AI and machine learning, the human-robot boundary in terms of service providing could become more transparent and invisible.
In this paper, we provide a review of service robots by their definitions, ac cording to the applied standards, a classification of the service robots by their dif ferent types of usage, according to IUE group’s definition. A review of the chal lenges in front of services providers, IT technologies and robot designers in order such service robots to deliver services, comparable with humans is presented Both reviews is supposed to be used as a basis for future reviews and researches, including architecture and technologies details.
Toward the unification and understanding, deployment, building and main tenance of robots, some committees (i.e., Technical Committee of the International Organization for Standardization) defined a standard Robotics — Vocabu lary, where all related to robotics terms and definitions are described with aim to consolidate their usage. This chapter is a short review of the main standards and definitions, according to ISO 8373:2021 and the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines Technical Committee (TC) ISO/TC 184 in order to manage standards in the field of auto mation systems and their integration, related to design, manufacture and maintenance, supply of products and related services. Areas of standardization include information systems, automation and control systems, and their integration with technologies.
According to the definition of provided in ISO 8373:2021 [
The standard also provides unification of terms, rules and common under standing from all stakeholders – from analysts and designers following programmers and engineers, to end-customers. In order the meanings in the accompanying standards not to be acknowledged on a diferent-from-standard way, the standard gives a classification into the following categories: • standards for mechanical structure; • standards for motion and movements; • standards for programming and control of movements; • standard for usage of sensors and navigation. • standards for modules and modularity; • productivity standards; • security standards.
Considering the standard and the definition of service robots described above, the following definitions of service robot activities for non-(professional (personal) or and non-professional) use, are provided additionally defined: • Activities performed by robots intended for personal use, are those including handling or delivering items, providing guidance or guidance services or information, and activities related to food and beverage preparation, cleaning activities etc.; • Activities performed by robots intended for professional use, are those including inspection, surveillance, handling and delivering of items, providing guidance or guidance services or information, etc.
The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) [
In this regard, the IFR develops its own definitions and classification of in
dustrial robots and service robots, by defining their usage according to the areas
of application [
The usefulness of using and applying standards and common definitions ben efits with regulation of common understanding of definitions, sustainable quality of product and service provided and unifying of the conditions for evaluation and control of the delivered by manufacturers and used by consumers..
The various usages of service robots in diferent application and service do mains, following definitions according to the 2 main standards mentioned above will be presented in this chapter. The main focus will be to go into details, by reviewing and representing on a hierarchical level categorization of service robots by their applicative, professional and non-professional utilization.
The classification approach of IFR [
The figure (see Figure 1) shows as well how the Covid-19 pandemic influent positively the market demand of service robots used as disinfection solutions in medicine domain and logistics solutions in warehouses and big factories as well.
There are four main types of movement: service robots can move on ground/ hard surface, on water movement, aerial movement, exoskeleton type, and any other robots. The service robots that do not fit to any of these groups, or robots that fall into more than one of the above classes, may be classified as “Others”. The full classification scheme is presented in (see Figure 2).
The classification covers almost all service robots use cases of MIRACle project. Of course, the usage of water and aerial based service robots in Intelligent home environment is limited due to the space and other environmental factors. From the other side, wearable service robots’ usage have a wide application as personal assistant, by helping and supporting disabled consumers.
The classification of service robots in regards of the respective application criteria is presented (see Figure 3). According to the provisions it has two separate categories: consumer-oriented robots presented in Chart 3short in this section and professional service robots, presented in next section. In the class of customer-oriented service robots, three main groups of applications are defined: service robots for domestic tasks, social interaction service robots, and home health care assistants.
The second application group is an example that justifies the deviation from
the criteria of ISO 8373:2021 for commercial versus non-commercial use for
the categorization of service robots [
This classification applies generally to Intelligent Home environment func tional group in MIRACle project IUE-Lab. The diferent layers of classification represents use cases of services for home and/or building automation (light, electricity, heating) and generally almost all home equipment, that could use sensors and wireless communications with remote management, cleaning and security.
The professional service robot applications category uses eight diferent groups of applications plus an additional group called “Other” professional service robots. In the ninth group are considered all service robots that do not fit into any of the above groups and classes.
All types of agricultural applications are grouped together in first group. Pro
fessional cleaning robots are divided by analogy with home cleaning robots,
considering the professional or trained operator usage and maintenance. Professional
inspection and maintenance robots are classified according to the site where they
are intended to be used. In this case it was accepted big buildings and other
construction for public use. The applied fourth group covers robots for construction
and demolition usage. Group 5 includes various logistics and transport robots in
diferent use cases. Robots grouped in medicine are used not only for diagnostics
and surgical operations (semi- or fully autonomous), but also for medical
scientific analysis, research and clinical trials [
Detailed graphical representation of professional service robots’ classifica tion by application criteria is given (see Figure 4).
Apart of the pure home or domestic usage, as mentioned in previous section, the classification of service robots for professional usage have a broad usage and are able to provide services in wide applicative domains. Here, Intelligent public environments group applies, as it covers not only the so-called “smart cities”, but also industrial applications in closed environment. Examples are Intelligent transportation, Smart buildings, Smart government, Smart security, and of course their service sustainability.
In this section was presented a classification overview of service robots, cov ering their usage by professional and non-professional operators and customers. The mentioned classification of service robots in diferent categories and applica tion domains, based on IFR approach, is indicative and obviously covers most of the service domain areas, which could be automated. We also described the significant grow in usage of service robots during the recent years and indicative statistics were shown at the beginning of the section.
According to the standard approach of providing customer services, peoples
must manage such services. As mentioned at the beginning, with advanced AI
[
Although, the so-called service robots have fairly high-tech computing
resources, their functionalities in terms of autonomy level, which depends on the
limited AI required. This implies the provision and use by the consumer of only
a limited range of services. The theory specifies four intelligences required for
service tasks: mechanical, analytical, intuitive, and empathetic, and lays out the
way service providers should decide between humans and machines for
accomplishing those tasks [
However, this is not so clear in the service robots, as they still cannot fully
cover the intuition and empathy of people [
On the other hand, the increasing prevalence of service robots, as discussed
in the previous section is quite positively perceived by consumers as an
innovation and mitigation of risks arising by the interaction with the human factor.
Therefor there is an increase in confidence and trustworthy of service robots [
A second dimension of this adoption are the respective business models. Based on that, the challenge for business owners is open. There is a necessity to determine the definition of the user-friendliest interface of the service robot (including appearance). This can provide with ways to upgrade existing services provided, to increase the level of service delivery, with all of their advantages and disadvantages. For the purpose research, based on surveys, feedback, analysis and other appropriate tools are required.
The third aspect for the successful adoption of service robots, is the consumer attitude. We need to determine what are/would be the customer expectations and what is the level of customer satisfaction. The comparison should be done according to the delivery of services from service robots today. Such comparison must take into account the limitations of technology and AI, today and in the near future, assuming a positive trend in their development).
Undoubtedly, the introduction of a wider range of service robots is a challenge for both the users and the service providers, and solutions should be provided by business models and user interface designers. The challenge is also to change the concept of service delivery with higher quality, consistent of consumer needs, with increased trustworthiness and security.
Service robots have been introduced in many areas and there is strong evidence that these robots can be adapted to specific needs in terms of tasks and functions.
In this paper a review of standardized definitions of service robots were ana lyzed and presented. The classification and usage per diferent principles, appli cations, and domains were represented and graphically visualized. A study of the interaction between service robots and customers, in terms of service provision and delivery was explored, with outcome about the need of closest collaboration between service providers, technology, designers and service robots’ manufacturers.
Continuous and stronger integration between all of the above-mentioned stakeholders, will evolve the further development of automation systems and services in many sectors and will support the focus to become more services oriented with even higher quality, customer satisfaction and trustworthy.
With appropriate scientific and mathematical modeling, based on a known localization and positioning algorithms, integration of autonomous intelligent systems, i.e., service robots in particular service domains navigating and providing guidance to consumers could be achieved.
Thereafter the author’s interests are focused on future researches and deployments of service models for: • integrated infrastructure, based on intelligent sensors and management devices; • data management including data modelling; • define service optimizations and delivery to the end consumers, based on the above models.
This paper is prepared with the support of MIRACle: Mechatronics, Innovation, Robotics, Automation, Clean technologies – Establishment and development of a Center for Competence in Mechatronics and Clean Technologies – Laboratory Intelligent Urban Environment, funded by the Operational Program Science and Education for smart growth 2014-2020, Project BG 05M2OP0011.002-0011.