Roboethics - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 79

3.5 Bioinspired Robots

In the past, the behaviour of technical systems has often been considered to be very
different from that of organic systems. However, there is now increasing interest in
looking to bioinspired approaches or using solutions in nature to fi nd responses to
technological problems. Classical examples include cyborg insects developed as
part of the Hybrid Insect Micro Electromechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) pro-
gramme ( http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/biomedical/bionics/cyborg-cockroaches-
to-the-rescue ), which is aiming to develop methods for controlling insect locomotion,
and the six-legged spider walking robot Lauron ( http://www.fzi.de/forschung/
projekt- details/lauron/ ) . There are also a number of animal robots, which are attrac-
tive as toys and companions. One of the oldest and best known is the Sony AIBO
dog robot (Fujita 2001 ; Golubovic and Hu 2002 ). Others include the NeCoRo cat
robot (Libin and Libin 2004 ) and the Paro baby harp seal robot (Wada and Shibata
2007 ; Wada et al. 2004 ).

4 Roboethics

4.1 Introductory Ideas

Current approaches to roboethics are mainly based on considering how to make
intelligent robots behave morally, largely through the provision of moral rules to
govern their actions rather than considering the wider issues associated with the
(widespread) introduction of (intelligent) robots. The basis of roboethics is Isaac
Asimov's '3 (4) laws of robotics' ( undated , p. 27).

First Law : A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a
human being to come to harm.
Second Law: A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where
such orders would confl ict with the First Law.
Third Law : A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does
not confl ict with the First or Second Law.
Fourth Law (Law Zero) (added later): No robot may harm humanity or, through
inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

While these laws are very simple, confl icts and contradictions will occur in prac-
tice, as Asimov ( undated ) illustrates in his short stories. As discussed in Chap. 2 ,
there have been attempts to encapsulate human ethics in a single principle, but in
practice a combination of ethical principles is required to give a full approach to eth-
ics. In addition, many of these ethical principles are more complex than Asimov's
laws of robotics, and they frequently require interpretation. One of the problems with
this approach to morality for robots is that it is purely rule based and does not allow
for intelligent decision-making or any actual agency, therefore making robots tools