It is a generally accepted vision throughout companies and research groups that one of the most promising technologies people can expect in the future is that of intelligent service robotics. Service robots will be employed in many aspects of everyday life. They will vacuum the house, mow the lawn or do the washing-up. They will be employed as museum guides, harvest fruit or keep the streets clean. Almost infinitelly many tasks can be envisioned.

This is an extremely challenging research area, and a lot of effort is needed the coming years to actually make robots compatible with not only the tasks we want them to perform, but also with the humans with whom they will have to cooperate and ultimatelly live together.

There is still is a lot of potential in the development of intelligent robots for industrial tasks, such as assembly or disassembly. Typical examples of applications are automated disassembly of complex devices, or acquisition of new skills for (dis)assembly by demonstration in order to get a cheap and fast "non-programming" solution that creates the posibility for flexible small batch production.