Somewhat unknowingly, I had been following a systematically devised set of rituals to prepare and eat all my meals.
After rushing back from my lab, located conveniently within 2 minutes of walking distance, I put my bagel in the toaster and open my laptop sitting beside it. A progress bar starts to move forward as the laptop wakes up from its ‘sleep’ mode.  A slice of bagel takes longer to toast than the time it takes for my laptop to wake up for me. Before the progress bar reaches the 50% …

Dr. Machiel Van der Loos forwarded me an article on Paro from the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago. Paro is a furry baby seal robot with the potential to impact people emotionally: it has two huge eyes that can stare at you adoringly and it can move its body parts like a real pup. Emotional bonds with artifacts, such as objects, etc, have been discussed for hundreds and thousands of years in literature. The question for today’s discussion is, ‘Would our emotional bonds with Paro lead to a happy ending, or an ethical ending?’

For the first time in the world a robot conducted a wedding for a cute Japanese couple, BBC reports.
BBC News – Tokyo couple married by robot in rooftop wedding.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, also known to us as UAVs, have already been in the centre of roboethics discussion for many years. But now, the discussion has expanded from voices of the academia and the public to the US government.
Brought to my attention by the Robot Ethics facebook group (Roger F. Gay), the following is a direct copy from the US Committee on Oversight and Government Reform website.
They provide links and documents, as well as webcasts of the first and second panel. (Link: Hearing on Rise of the Drones: Unmanned Systems and …

About a week ago from today was the 31st anniversary of the first ever recorded death by a robot.  Although it was an industrial accident, Wired asked Ronald Arkin for comments on the incident. It is also interesting how the author of the article uses the phrase ‘human spirit’ to describe Arkin’s current work in robotics.
Arkin is concerned more about the human spirit’s reaction to interacting with robots, especially as one goal of robotics is to create a personal companion to fulfill our daily needs, like the robot Rosie from The Jetsons.

Read …

Brought to my attention today from Dr. Veruggio’s facebook post is Honda’s short film on the development of ASIMO (embedded below).
The theme around the short 8 minute film is how robots are making a positive impact in human society, and how robots like ASIMO is helping us understand humans.
The Roboethics community’s beloved blogger Wendell Wallach(http://moralmachines.blogspot.com/) is featured in the documentary.

The Agenda with Steve Paikin (broadcasted by TVO) covered a special issue filmed at the Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Ontario - I can’t believe they filmed it so close to where I did my undergrad (University of Waterloo).
The show frames the discussion around the question “How will robotics change our lives and our evolution?”, talks about what is currently considered ‘feasible’ in robotics and what it means to our future lives.
Guest speakers are (excepts from TVO below), and embed of the video is also provided for you below:
Michael Belfiore is a writer …

Two days ago, I went to watch the movie Avatar.
I thought the plot was quite blend, but that was soon forgotten when I started to see the linkage between the idea of singularity and the movie’s storyline.
For those of you who are new to the idea of singularity the following paragraph is my attempt to describe it to you using my limited knowledge of the topic:
Key promoters of the theory/science – also called apocalyptic AI – are Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec. Their singularity argument is that machine intelligence will …

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the visitors to the Roboethics Info Database (aka. tin can thoughts).
Since May 25th, 2008 (the  day I made my first post) this blog has led me to connect with so many people in the field of roboethics.
Now, Google tells me that over 80 people visit the Roboethics Info Database regularly, and they come from 10 different countries covering four different continents: North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. And I feel so privileged to have such a large …

Embedded below is a talk by Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown at TED.com discussing global ethic vs. national interest.
It’s somewhat related to roboethics in a way, since the field has been promoting communication between different countries to talk about common global ethic issues – although national interests in the field of robotics may lurk beneath.
via Gordon Brown on global ethic vs. national interest | Video on TED.com.