November 2021

Summit Part 3: “Europe’s Future of Work is Human-Centric”

The third and final session of the European Robotics summit in 2021, “Europe’s Future of Work is Human-Centric!” took place virtually on Tuesday, November 30th. The final installment of the 2021 summit was well attended with close to 40 experts from the industry.

Given the increasing presence and use of robotics and automation across various industries, there is more attention than ever being focused on designing the future of work. With this in mind, the main focus of the final session of this year’s summit was the Good Work Charter of the European Robotics Industry and ongoing activities in this area.

The Charter was originally developed by a working group of members of EUnited Robotics and it was officially launched on 28 January 2021. Its 10 focus areas succinctly outline the direction which we must take in order to shape the future of work between robots and humans. As such, this final summit set out to recapitulate our progress in publicizing the Charter to companies and public policy officials, and the ongoing work being done to encourage the formal endorsement of the Charter by organizations.

Building on from this discussion on the Good Work Charter, participants then listened to a series of talks by guest speakers who presented inspiring examples for shaping the future of work with robots. We would like to thank all of the speakers at this final session of the summit for the following interesting and informative talks:

“In a nutshell: The EUnited Robotics Good Work Charter” by Patrick Schwarzkopf, Director, Robotics Sector, EUnited AISBL

“Putting people first – impacts of technological change on work and practical solutions for a fairer future” by Anna Thomas, The Institute for the Future of Work (IFOW), UK

“Robots as accelerators of inclusion: How technology can enable people with disabilities” by Florian Nadolny, Rethink Robotics; and Dr. Raimund Schmolze-Krahn, Syndeo GmbH

Our thanks to Wilfried Eberhardt (Chairman of EUnited Robotics and CMO of KUKA AG) for his opening address!

Also, our thanks to all participants for their input and suggestions on launching an endorsement campaign for the Good Work Charter, which we will start in January 2022.

Past sessions of the 2021 European Robotics Summit: 

• Session 1: 22nd April – “A new breed of robots - disruptive or simply opening new markets?”
• Session 2: 29th June – “AI, robotics and regulation – where is Europe headed?”

As the European Robotics Summits take place every two years, the next summit is scheduled to take place in 2023. Stay tuned for more updates!

With the close of the final session of the 4th European Robotics summit in 2021, we will continue our work to encourage companies and end-users to endorse the Good Work Charter. In the meantime, our AI regulatory work continues. Expect further updates in 2022 on this front concerning our activities.

For any questions about the summit or for any related questions, please contact Patrick.Schwarzkopf@eu-nited.net and Fariba.Khatami@eu-nited.net