Defining Synergies Between Robotics, Cognitive Infocommunications and Internet of Digital Reality

Robotic applications have prominently emerged in automating a wide range of high-precision tasks in industry, logistics, health and military applications. More recently, applications focused on socio-cultural contexts, such as caretaking and personal assistance, have begun to gain traction. In parallel, earlier focus on mechanical and mathematical/control solutions has visibly shifted toward aspects of intelligent and collaborative functions. These changes have brought various aspects of the fields of cognitive infocommunications (CogInfoCom) and Internet of Digital Reality (IoD) to the forefront, both in terms of design methodologies and application areas. While CogInfoCom places emphasis on new kinds of cognitive capabilities / entities that are neither purely human, nor purely artificial, IoD highlights the integration of such capabilities and entities in networked settings created to support specific semantic contexts. Importantly, the scope of such capabilities and/or entities is not limited only to intelligent agents and collaborating humans but also to less capable agents (e.g., cyber-physical and industrial control devices). In a socio-cultural context, the interaction between a robot and other agents (particularly a human) can be viewed as the communication of cognitive entities through some form of Cognitive Infocommunication channels. This paper proposes a new way to view the communication between intelligent robots and cognitive entities.