Corresponding author: Spassky Boris A., Ph. D., Russian State Scientific Center for Robotics and Technical Cybernetics, St.Petersburg, 194064, Russian Federation, e-mail: bors@rtc.ru

Received on May 29, 2017
Accepted on June 08, 2017

The paper is devoted to the main trends in development of robotics. Its authors point out that in the next decade most of the civilian applications of robots will shift to the sphere of the consumer services. As far as the service robots for professional uses are concerned, considerable efforts will be concentrated on research and development in the field of transport, defense and security, in the extreme conditions of operation in the submersed and highly radioactive environments. The robots will clean the near-Earth space of the remains of the technological activities and will also become a part of the planetary defense against comets and asteroids. It is expected that the efforts of the developers will be aimed at creation and integration of new technologies for the ground-based and sea-based robots. Cooperative behavior and control of the heterogeneous groups of robots will be a challenging task for scientists. Particular attention will be paid to development of biosimilar technical devices, "soft" robots and biocompatible manipulators. The main tasks of the ground-based robots still are reconnaissance, search for people injured in the hard-to-reach areas, security, inspection and provision of access to the strategically important facilities, patrolling of buildings and territories, evacuation or on-site elimination of hazards. At that, a key element for improvement of the unmanned systems' efficiency will be their higher level of autonomy. The authors note that an important task of the robotics is to ensure an effective communication between humans and robots. The prevailing methods of communication will be gesticulation and speech technologies. A widespread introduction of robots will inevitably raise the question of the legal and social aspects of the human-robot interaction.
Keywords: robotics, development of robotics, industrial robot, service robot, robotic technologies, autonomous vehicle, human-robot interaction