Can robots become our 'phriends'?

"A friendly collaboration between humans and robots is not always easy. Either robots work efficiently and far from humans in controlled environments, or they're equipped with lots of sensors to work along humans and not harm them. Now, a EU-funded project, Phriends -- short for 'Physical Human-Robot Interaction: DepENDability and Safety' -- has started to force robots to respect Asimov's laws. In a nutshell, these laws say that robots cannot cause harm to humans and that they have to obey us. This 3-year project will end next year and has received € 2.16 million from the EU. (...) The robots developed by Phriends will be intrinsically safe, since the safety is guaranteed by their very physical structure, and not by external sensors or algorithms that can fail. (...)"

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