Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
Roboethics
Peter Kopacek and Marion Hersh
Overview
Robotics is a very fast-growing fi eld and presents us with both a number of exciting
possibilities and the threat of signifi cant changes to society, possibly in unforesee-
able and undesirable directions. The chapter discusses the associated ethical issues.
It is introduced by defi nitions and statistics on different types of robots and contin-
ues to a brief overview of some of the main technological developments and current
and probable future applications of robots. The concept of roboethics is then intro-
duced and the limitations of early approaches based on Asimov's (
undated
) laws of
robotics are noted. However, the more general defi nition (Veruggio and Operto
2008
) is able to cover the wider social implications of the introduction of robots and
could be extended to include the impacts on the environment and other species. The
ethical issues of current and future applications of robots are illustrated by a number
of examples covering a wide range of applications, including health care, military
robots and toy and companion robots. A number of the ethical theories presented in
Chap.
2
are then applied to the evaluation of several of the applications of robots.
1
Introduction
Robotics is still a relatively new fi eld. Many different types of robots have been
developed and signifi cant numbers are in use, both in industry and in service appli-
cations. However, robots and domestic service robots in particular still have science
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