Last December I first made a post about the upcoming IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine(RAM) call for papers for the special issue on  roboethics.
Well, the deadline for the paper submission is approaching quickly, and hence, it’s worth posting again.
When is the deadline? It’s September 1st 2010.
This is opportunity is really exciting because the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine is not just any magazine that gets mailed to people’s houses once in a while just to be thrown out months later.
IEEE is one of the largest, if not the largest, engineering association, …

I’m going to switch gears today and talk about industrial automation.
Last December, Rockwell Automation – one of the leading companies in industrial automation – released a white paper entitled “International Safety Standards Keep Pace with Advances in Robotic Technology and Applications”. This paper talks about the current robotics safety standard (ISO 10218-1 and ANSI/RIA R15.06), and the new standard (part 2 of ISO 10218, or ISO 10218-2) being drafted for release in 2011.
With a brief overview of history of robots, the paper talks about how ANSI/RIA R.15.06 adopted in 1999 …

There’s nothing like the tingly feeling I get when I receive roboethics related Call for Papers.
First, there’s the excitement that motivates me to write or to think about writing. Then, there’s the anticipation for the papers to be published. Regardless of whether I end up contributing or not, there’s that exciting feeling of ‘I can’t wait for it to be published so that I can start reading them!’.
So here it is, a Call for Papers for Robot Ethics Anthology. I believe the CFP was first sent out about 1~2 weeks …

The following link is just another general editorial raising questions/concerns about various roboethics issues – not much is new.
But the article alludes to the possibility that virtual sex and our relationship with online avatars may help us in answering some of the questions regarding sex robots.
A woman in Britain broke up with her husband because she found his avatar (a computerized alter ego) having virtual sex online with someone else’s avatar.
Original Article: Smart robots are on the way.

I stumbled upon what seems to be the latest assessment of IEEE-RAS Technical Committee on Roboethics (the document is not dated).
Link to Document Here
This document would be handy to you if you want a concise summary on what has been done so far – and where to dig up more academic papers.
So far (within the last 3-4 years) there has been three workshops on Roboethics at ICRA:
• ICRA 2005, Workshop on Roboethics, Barcelona, Spain, April 18th, 2005
• ICRA 2007, Workshop on Roboethics, Rome, Italy, 14 April 2007
• ICRA 2009, Workshop …

NBC Coverage on Largest Drone Attack

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones – Wall Street Journal

On December 17th (Tuesday last week), our sister blog Moral Machines (a really informative and active blog run by the authors of the book Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong) made two posts about US drones.
One was the news about the largest drone attack by the US military (the first embed above), which happened that day – and I quote Moral Machines:
NBC is reporting that more than …

Web presence of Roboethics has definitely been on the rise this year, and I am thrilled to introduce you to one of them:
University of Twende – Roboethics Page
University of Twende hosted a conference on Society for Philosophy and Technology earlier this year (July 7-10, 2009), and this event has been advertised through the www.roboethics.org website despite the web’s under-construction status.
I’ve recently discovered their roboethics page, and I think you’ll find their ‘Literature’ section especially useful. They approach roboethics as subset of philosophy, and have a listing of foundational literatures in …

I have a very exciting news for all the roboethics researchers around the world.
A call for papers on a special issue on roboethics have just been released from IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine(RAM)! Yes, the RAM is running a special issue on roboethics!!
Deadline for submission has been set to September 1st, 2010 (so that’s a little less than a year from now).
Guest editors for this special issue are Gianmarco Veruggio, Mike Van der Loos, and Jorge Solis.
All three of them are very approachable and active figures in the field of roboethics …

For those of you who use Facebook, there is a roboethics Facebook group called ‘roboethics’, created by Dr. Gianmarco Veruggio. It hasn’t been too active, partially due to the fact that some of the posts are in Italian and some are in English. But there’s 67 members who joined the group, and I found out about the following roboethics related interviewsfrom it – and later from Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen’s blog, Moral Machines.
Both interviews are from Institute for Religion and Peace (Military Diocese of the Republic of Austria).
Gianmarco Veruggio(CNR-IEIIT …

Another newly discovered journal!

There are three special issues from this journal that might be of interest to you: 1.Psychological Benchmarks of Human-Robot Interaction(2007), 2. Human and Robot Interactive Communication(2008), 3. Robots in the Wile: Exploring human-robot interaction in naturalistic environments(2009)

Some interesting titles from the journal: “What is a Human? Toward psychological benchmarks in the field of human–robot interaction”, “Nonverbal intimacy as a benchmark for human–robot interaction”, and “The influence of robot personality on perceived and preferred level of user control”