Have you ever seen a bridge collapse on TV? We only care about inspection and maintenance if it does not work. However, robotics are changing the inspection & maintenance landscape, and significant societal and political implications follow the magnitude of innovation. To pay due attention to these developments, the communication on innovation in robotics for inspection & maintenance has to play a role in informing and influencing the target groups for the successful adoption of robotics technologies. The question on what role communications play in forming the perception of innovative technology was discussed in the workshop "Communicating innovation: What can we do better?" on May 25th, 2022.

One of the essential factors for widespread robotics adoption, especially in the inspection and maintenance area, is the regulatory landscape. Regulatory and legal issues should be addressed to establish effective robotics deployment legal frameworks. Common goals of boosting the widespread adoption of robotics can only be achieved by creating networks between the robotics community and regulators. On the 23rd of March, Maarit Sandelin, Peter Voorhans and Dr Carlos Cuevas Garcia were invited by Robotics4EU and RIMA network to discuss how cooperation among regulators and the robotics community can be fostered and what are the most pressing legal challenges for the inspection & maintenance application area of robotics. Maarit Sandelin and Peter Voorhans from Robotic Innovation Department in SPRINT Robotics have opened the workshop with the question of why robotics are important in inspection and maintenance?

The Inspection and Maintenance (I&M) Industry represents a large economic activity spanning across multiple sectors such as energy, oil & gas, water supply, transport, civil engineering, and infrastructure. RIMA project aims at bringing together Digital Innovation Hubs and Facilitators operating under a common network that allow them to join forces and competences in promoting I&M robotics in Europe. The BIS Research projects' analysis of the Inspection and Maintenance Robot Industry forecasts that the I&M market will grow at a significant CAGR of 12.73% on the basis of value from 2020 to 2025. In 2019, Europe dominated the 40% of the global inspection and maintenance robot market (BIS322A, Mar 2020). Although the European Union hosts most of the I&M robotics offer – being France, Germany, and Spain (and U.K. until 2021 Brexit) the leading manufacturing countries, there is still a bottleneck connecting this offer to the market and high potential applications.

Robotics4EU is a 3-years-long EU-funded project which advocates for a wider adoption for AI-based robots in 4 sectors: healthcare, inspection and maintenance of infrastructure, agri-food, and agile production. Thus, Robotics4EU raises awareness about non-technological aspects in robotics through delivering a series of workshops to involve the research community, industry representatives and citizens. Social impact of Robotics in Inspection and Maintenance" which took place on the 26th of January, 2022 tackled the problem of interactions between robots and humans. How to evaluate the real impact of robotics on our society? How to decide if robots are hazardous and may complicate human lives? To what extent does society accept rapidly progressing robotic technologies?