2020 EURA – Industry 4.0 Innovation Boot Camp

The Course is designed for policy-makers, public officers, entrepreneurs, investors, businessmen, lawyers, practitioners, consultants, engineers and other professionals interested either in bringing robotics and AI products onto the market or in making use of robotics and AI solutions or industrial processes in their businesses.

The course, at its second edition, aims at providing students with a broad understanding of all implications of robotics that are going to be increasingly relevant in the legal, political and social debate over the coming years.

According to a study carried out by McKinsey, robotics may have an impact on the market greater than 4.5 trillion per year by 2025. Developing a leading industry in this field, therefore, is strategic: all the world’s largest economies are heavily investing in its research.

At the same time new technologies as biorobotics (bionic limbs, exoskeletons, brain machine interfaces) are going to deeply challenge our understanding of human life and human limits; others, as expert systems and AI, promise to reshape the labor market. Every aspect of our societies is going to be involved and changed: mere technological research is not sufficient to drive new technologies toward a human oriented progress.

Social scientists – lawyers, political scientists, economists – as well as engineers researching these technologies need to get together, addressing the relevant issues raised by new technologies. In order to do so, they need to acquire a new and open interdisciplinary approach involving law, economics, engineering and ethics together.

The purpose of the intensive 6-day course is to offer the most advanced insight on R&AI regulation to practitioners, investors, entrepreneurs, business-people interested either in bringing R&AI products onto the market or in making use of R&AI solutions or industrial processes in their businesses, with a focus on Industry 4.0 themes.

The boot-camp course aims therefore at providing practical and immediately applicable knowledge, and will offer insight on a number of issues in a multidisciplinary perspective including:

(1) EU laws applicable to R&AI-enabled products interconnected with the human (e.g. assistive or implantable technologies)

(2) EU laws applicable to R&AI solutions for flexible and efficient production

(3) Current Issues on EU law on R&AI

The most relevant issues arising from either newly adopted regulations at EU and Member States level will be discussed, providing detailed and practical guidance on how that could impact businesses (e.g. GDPR on privacy-by-design, legislation on driverless vehicles and other technologies, reforms to the machine directive and other legislations currently under consideration at EU level applicable to R&AI).

Attività: 

The Course has the following Educational Objective:

-        offer the most advanced insight on R&AI regulation, 

-        provide practical and immediately applicable knowledge using a multidisciplinary and functional-based methodology, focussing on: (i) EU laws applicable to R&AI-enabled products interconnected with the human (e.g. assistive or implantable technologies); (ii) EU laws applicable to R&AI solutions for flexible and efficient production; (iii) current Issues on EU law on R&AI.

-        provide participants with the methodological and analytical skills necessary to: (i) identify issues of specific relevance for operators who intend to use or distribute R&AI applications in their activities, (ii) provide advanced solutions and practical and immediately applicable knowledge to the operators on these issues.

The Course is structured into lectures and case-studies; the interdisciplinary approach is one of the main features of the course.

The classes will address the following topics:

-        Current Issues on EU law on R&AI

-        Current trends in AI and robotics

-        IP law

-        Technology Trends

-        Technology assessment

-        AI, data protection and data ethics

-        Standards and product safety  

-        Product liability (civil and criminal)     

A detailed program is available at the following link: https://www.eura.santannapisa.it/bootcamp

The Course lasts 6 days. Each class lasts 1.30, with 30 minutes’ break.

The teaching body includes a broad range of professors of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on the Regulation of Robotics and AI, coming from various fields such as law, engineering, philosophy, social robotics, management and innovation, providing an extremely interdisciplinary perspective. Most of the professors have actively participated in the Jean Monnet Module “Europe Regulates Robotics” and the previous RoboLaw project, funded by the European Commission (FP7), which developed the “Guidelines on Regulating Robotics” presented to the European Parliament and Commission in September 2014. Those guidelines triggered political debate and led to the establishment of a Commission of the European Parliament, currently discussing necessary legal reform and political action to ensure the development of a strong, yet responsible, European robotic industry, and manage the many ethical, social and economic issues that robotics brings about.

Dr. Bertolini is the Director and Scientific Coordinator of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on the Regulation of Robotics and AI, within which the Summer School is organized. His research on law and technology addresses a wide range of issues, from liability, insurance and risk-management of robotic devices, to human enhancement and robo-ethics. Since 2014, he has often advised both the European Parliament and Commission on the regulation of robotics and his research was covered by national and international press (including the Economist, BBC radio, The Times, Wired, Motherboard, Corriere della Sera, Sole24Ore).