EuRobotics Deliverable D.3.2.1 ELS IssuesInRobotics

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    euRoboticsThe European Robotics Coordination Action

    Grant Agreement Number: 248552

    01.01.2010 31.12.2012Instrument: Coordination and Support Action (CSA)

    D3.2.1 Ethical Legal and Societalissues in robotics

    Authors

    Christophe Leroux (CEA LIST)Roberto Labruto (ALENIA AERMACCHI)

    Lead contractor for this deliverable: CEA LISTDue date of deliverable: December 31, 2012

    Actual submission date: December 31, 2012

    Dissemination level: Public

    Revision: 1.0

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    Executive summary

    This document is a contribution to provide some elements to understand and address the Ethical,Legal and Societal issues (ELS) in robotics.

    This document Ethical and Legal and Societal issues in robotics together with the annex documentsuggestion for a green paper on legal issues in robotics constitutes the deliverable D3.2.1 ofeuRobotics project

    The report represents the result of the effort undertaken in the project euRobotics [14] on ELS issueshindering the development of robotics in Europe. It includes sets of suggestions and a roadmap onethical, legal and societal issues in robotics. The document does not explore all ELS issues. It ismeant to stimulate and organize a debate on this topic.

    This document can also be taken as a guide book for robotics people to know basics on ethical, legaland societal issues in robotics as well as for, philosophers, lawyers, and people interested in societalmatters as a reference to matters that concern robotics and its development in Europe.

    One major contribution of this document is the bringing together result of work already made in thedomain in the past. Some specific additional effort was undertaken on legal issues in robotics whichresulted in a suggestion for a green paper on legal issues in robotics available in a separate

    document.This deliverable focuses on analysing the issues specific to robotics. It makes a distinctiveanalysis of Ethical, Legal and Societal issues in robotics. We propose roadmaps and actionsaddressing specific issues and targeting specific communities: jurists, politicians, experts in socialsciences, and robotics stakeholders. We also chose a top down approachstarting from the conceptsof Ethical, Legal and Societal issues to investigate the problems instead of studying issues one casestudy after the other.

    In the conclusions, the report recommends presenting clearly what are the valuesreferred to whenanalysing Ethical issues. The report recommends relying on values presented in the FundamentalCharter of Human Rightswhen examining Ethical issues because this charter is founded on theindivisible, universal values.

    For law issues, we propose some further investigations on IPR, labour law and non-contractualliability. After explaining the concept of electronic personhood, we also suggest some furtherinvestigation in order to study how this concept could be implemented. Besides the domain dependantsuggestions, we also propose more general tracks like harmonizing European legislation andregulationsin order to facilitate the emergence of robotics in Europe.

    We also support the idea of keeping thetop down approachwhen analysing ELS issues in order toaddress the widest spectrum of robotics applications.

    In its conclusion, the report recommends analysing the possibility toresituate ethical, legal andsocietal issues in a larger technological context than roboticsin order to provide, as a result,more impacting solutions and to adopt and rely on already existing solutions. Making a link betweenrobotics and other technological domains would lead to avoid considering robotics as a unique,distinctive and strangetechnology in order to make people trust robots and robotics.

    The report finally recommends working at providing guidelinesto help robotics developers andexperts analysing ELS issues,

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    Content

    1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 51.1. What is the purpose of this document? ................................................................................... 51.2. Plan of the document ............................................................................................................... 5

    2. Background and approach ............................................................................................................... 62.1. Some definitions ...................................................................................................................... 6

    2.1.1. About Ethics ..................................................................................................................... 62.1.2. About societal issues ....................................................................................................... 62.1.3. About legal issues............................................................................................................ 7

    2.2. Context and past work in the domain ...................................................................................... 72.3. Analytical approach to ELS issues in robotics ......................................................................... 8

    2.3.1. Top down approach ......................................................................................................... 82.3.2.

    Disjoint analysis of Ethical, Legal and Societal issues .................................................... 8

    2.3.3. Issues specific to robotics ................................................................................................ 9

    2.4. Limits of this document ............................................................................................................ 93. Methodology ................................................................................................................................... 104. Ethical issues in robotics ................................................................................................................ 12

    4.1. Focus ..................................................................................................................................... 124.2. Diversity ................................................................................................................................. 124.3. Which Values? ....................................................................................................................... 124.4. Ethical issues specific to robotics .......................................................................................... 13

    4.4.1. Assistive robotics for elderly or disabled people ........................................................... 134.4.2. Security robotics ............................................................................................................ 144.4.3. Toy robotics ................................................................................................................... 144.4.4. Sexual robotics .............................................................................................................. 144.4.5. Human extension, exoskeleton ..................................................................................... 15

    4.5. Conclusion on ethical issues ................................................................................................. 155. Societal issues ............................................................................................................................... 16

    5.1. Background ............................................................................................................................ 165.2. Approach ............................................................................................................................... 16

    5.2.1. Challenges identified during the workshops .................................................................. 165.2.2. Blind surveys ................................................................................................................. 18

    5.3. Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 246. Legal issues ................................................................................................................................... 257. Conclusions, priorities and suggestions for further proceedings ................................................... 268. Appendix A Communication ........................................................................................................ 279. Appendix B - Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 2810. Appendix D Glossary .............................................................................................................. 3011. Appendix E Experts and specialists that took part in the green paper elaboration ................ 35

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    12. Appendix F List of events and meetings organized on Legal issues in robotics .................... 3713. Appendix G Legal issues in robotics ...................................................................................... 38

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    1. Introduction

    1.1. What is the purpose of this document?Who has never faced fears of overpowering robots or questions about the negative impact of robotics

    on employment or other worries about the consequences of introduction of robots in the society?Besides robotics experts, developers, industrials, researchers can be puzzled when trying to promotetheir ideas, their products or their research. Providing answer to these questions is not obvious whenwe look back at the effort made on these topics. It needs some deep investigation mixing the point ofview of experts from social sciences and robotics. Since robotics is an evolving and very lively sciencethis effort must be kept in time.

    This document includes sets of suggestions and a roadmap on ethical, legal and societal issues inrobotics. It describes the effort undertaken in the project euRobotics (euRobotics coordination action ,2012) on ethical, legal and societal issues hindering the development of robotics in Europe. Thedocument does not explore all ethical, legal and societal issues in robotics.

    euRobotics [14] is a coordination actionsupported by the European Commission1. The generalobjective of this coordination action is to act and find ways to favour the development of European

    robotics. One of the task to reach this objective is to identify obstacles hindering the development ofrobotics with a specific focus on service robotics and to propose actions facilitating the developmentsof robotics activity in Europe in terms of research, development, innovation, market or usage. Thisdocument represents one part of the road mapping effort conducted in euRobotics on Ethical, Legaland Societal (ELS) issues deterring the development of robotics in Europe. The study focused onissuesspecific to robotics.We however try to emphasize the connections between ELS issues inrobotics with ELS issues in other engineering domains in order to provide more impactingrecommendations. We limited our study to European societal frame although we observed withsurveyed the effort made in the domain outside Europe.

    This document can also be taken as a guide book for robotics people to get to know the basics onELS issues in robotics as well as for lawyers as a reference to matters that concern robotics and itsdevelopment in Europe.

    This document Ethical and Legal and Societal issues in robotics together with the annex documentsuggestion for a green paper on legal issues in robotics constitutes the deliverable D3.2.1 ofeuRobotics project.

    1.2. Plan of the documentChapter 1 (current chapter) presents the context

    Chapter Fehler! Verweisquelle konnte nicht gefunden werden.frames the problem

    Chapter 3 describes the methodology chosen to analyse ELS issues

    Chapter 4 presents the effort made on Ethical issues

    Chapter 5 analyses societal issues in robotics

    Chapter 6 presents the investigation of legal issues.

    Chapter 7 concludes the report.

    The appendices contain a glossary, the list of people involved in the elaboration of the document, thepublications made, the bibliography, the meetings organized and a visual presentation of the roadmap.

    In the following, sections, we describe the methodology adopted to identify ELS issues in robotics andto propose solutions to overcome these issues.

    1 grant agreement number 248552

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    2. Background and approachIn this chapter, we start in section 2.1 by providing a few definitions related to ethics, legal and societyconcepts. These definitions are meant to frame the problem and explain the analytical approachchosen in our study and presented in this report on ELS issues in robotics.

    2.1. Some definitions

    2.1.1. About Ethics

    Ethics

    Science of good and evil [33] It is in the area of ethics to determine what is good or bad[18], [30] The goal of ethics is to indicate how human beings should behave, act and be towards

    others people and towards what surrounds them[7]

    Area of ethics

    Philosophers divide ethics in domains whose bounds are not always perfectly clear [13], [6].

    Meta-ethics: is the study of concepts, of judgements and moral reasoning, Normative ethics: concerns the elaboration of norms prescribing what is right or

    wrong, what must be done or what must not Applied ethics: application of the two domains above to specific problems (feminism,

    environment, biology, professional ethics etc.) Descriptive ethics: is sometimes added as a separate area. It is the study of peoples

    beliefs about morality.

    In other words one defines:

    Descriptive ethics: What do people think is right? Normative (prescriptive) ethics: How should people act? Applied ethics: How do we take moral knowledge and put it into practice? Meta-ethics: What does 'right' even mean?

    Normative ethics

    The central debate of normative ethics is the question opposing

    Virtue ethics: in which moral evaluation focuses on the inherent character of a personrather than on specific actions

    Deontology:in which moral evaluation carries on the actions according to imperativenorms, to duties

    Consequentialism: in which moral evaluation carries on actions and among theircontribution to improve the state of the world. Consequentialism include utilitarianismwhich holds that an action is right if it leads to the happiness of the greatest number ofpeople

    Differences between ethics and moral

    Some authors make a distinction between ethics and moral with diverse successes [13].Ethics comes from the Greek and moral comes from the Latin both have the samesignification. We will make no differences between the two terms in this document.

    2.1.2. About societal issues

    Societal

    Pertaining to the society of or relating to society (Merriam-Webster dictionary)

    Social

    Of or relating to human society and its modes of organization (Merriam-Webster, The Freedictionary)

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    Societal responsibility

    It is the concept indicating the responsibility of an entity (economic agent, group, community)relatively to social, sanitary, and environmental consequences of its activity and specifically forits stakeholders [8].

    Societal responsibility relies on two principles:

    1. Willing to assume the impact of ones activities and of ones decisions on theenvironment and the society

    2. Report using credible and transparent indicators

    ISO 26000 [8] provides guidance on how businesses and organizations can operate in aresponsible way for society.

    2.1.3. About legal issues

    Legal

    According to law, not in violation of law or anything (Dictionary of law)

    Most of the definitions regarding law issues are provided in the proposal for a green paper document.

    2.2. Context and past work in the domainInvestigating Ethical, Legal and Societal issues in robotics necessitates interaction between variousdomains and disciplines which are traditionally disconnected in teaching, expertise or professionallysuch as technique, philosophy, social sciences, laws, and possibly history and religion. This makescomplex the dialog between experts in different domains. We experienced this several time during thisaction. One typical example is the difference of interpretation between scientists and lawyers about theconcept of autonomy. For the first ones, an autonomous robot is a machine that makes decisionsaccording to sensor information in a more or less deterministic way. For lawyers and probably for mostof the public, an autonomous robot makes its own decision according to its (or his) consciousness; arobot is almost a post-human entity.

    Since the birth of the concepts of robots and robotics, it was clear that a machine capable of

    undertaking actions in close contact and with direct involvement of humans must be constrained by aprecise set of ethical, legal and societal rules previously established. One of the most famous attemptsto define what are these rules that a robot has to obey is the formulation of the Asimov's famous threelaws of robotics [12], that state (in decreasing priority in case of mutual conflicts): that a robot is notallowed to do anything that would harm a human being; that a robot should always obey a human; thata robot should defend itself. Unfortunately, even if these rules can be a good starting point (which isdebatable as Asimovs own robot stories were an exploration of the potential unintendedconsequences of such basic rules), they are too abstract, inaccurate and too much relying on sensitiveconcepts to be used in practice or to be implemented in actual devices. For this reason, in recentyears, as the technology is becoming more and more developed, a debate has arisen concerning howthe guide lines relating to ELS issues should be practically implemented.

    In 2004, during the First International Symposium on Roboethics, Gianmarco Veruggio [1] coined anew word, Roboethics, meaning a human-centred ethics applied to robotics, able to guide thedesign, construction and use of the robots and their interactions with humans. This subject coversmany disciplines such as robotics, computer science, artificial intelligence, philosophy, ethics, biology,physiology, cognitive science, neurosciences, law, sociology, psychology and industrial design. Someof the topics treated by Roboethics are: the societal and cultural variations in robotics acceptance,privacy, the impact of revolutionary technological changes on employment, the ethical implications ofmachines that kill or assist in killing, sexual activity and robotics (i.e. robot partners), the professionaland social responsibility, personal and corporate accountability and liability for harm, the human-machine integration in a shared environment, and the application of precautionary principles.

    An important European project related with ELS issues is the FP6 project Ethicbots (that lasted from2005 to 2007) [17] with the objectives of identifying techno-ethical case-studies on the basis of a state-of-the-art survey in human-machine integration, identifying and analysing techno-ethical issuesconcerning these forms of human-machine integration by reference to case-studies analysis,

    establishing a techno-ethically aware community of researchers by promoting workshops,dissemination, training activities and generating inputs to EU for techno-ethical monitoring, i.e.

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    providing recommendations for EU ethical regulations amendments and stimulating the EuropeanGroup on Ethics (EGE) in science and new technologies and other ethical councils.

    One of the results obtained within the Ethicbots [17] project is the Triaging Methodological Approach.Taking into account that there is a huge amount of technologies, projects and systems in the field ofrobotics that need an ethical analysis and assessment, it is necessary to prioritize them, discriminatingbetween the ones that comprise techno-ethical problems that raise concern now and techno-ethical

    problems that may be significant in a distant future only. To do that, the triage methodology is basedon the selection criteria of imminence (a useful manner for identifying technologies and projects in thefield of robotics that more urgently call for an ethical assessment), novelty (this criterion is useful todiscriminate among technologies and projects that are not only needy of an ethical assessment, butthat have also the potentiality to cause changes in the life of individuals and social groups) andpotential social pervasiveness (this criterion is useful to discriminate among technologies and projectsthat have the potential to cause changes in the life of more extended communities or even humansociety as a whole).

    In parallel to the above initiatives on ELS issues, several projects like LIREC[9] or SERA[11]COMPANIONABLE[4], CARE-O-BOT[23], KOMPAfrom ROBOSOFT[10] SAM andAVISO [28] focus a largepart of their effort on social acceptance of robots bringing together different world like ethology, socialscience, design & computer.

    2.3. Analytical approach to ELS issues in roboticsThe current report is a follow up to the previous studies undertaken on Ethical issues in robotics.However it proposes a different approach in adopting what we could call an analytical approachtoELS issues in robotics instead of an empirical approachin the previous work based on case studies.

    In adopting a systematictop down approach methodology In making a disjoint analysis of Ethical issues of Legal issues and of Societal issues in

    robotics In restricting the analysis to issuesspecific to robotics

    The consequence is that the report proposes roadmaps and actions addressing specific issuesandtargeting specific communities: jurists, politicians, experts in social sciences, and robotics

    stakeholders. Some specific efforts were undertaken on legal issues in robotics which resulted in asuggestion for a green paper on legal issues in robotics extracted from the deliverable.

    2.3.1. Top down approach

    The top down approach proposed in this document consists in analysing ELS issues starting from theconcepts of ethics, of laws and of society rather than starting from robotics case studies to understandELS issues in robotics. It consists in considering Ethics, Laws and regulations, and current Societydefining some constraints to be respected when doing research, developing, producing and usingrobots.

    The advantage of the top down approach is that it determines larger impacting issues than thosehighlighted when starting from specific case study. For example, privacy issues are general to allrobotics applications dealing with management of personal data (including usage of cameras).

    Therefore we need a unique framework to know how to deal with privacy issues in robotics. This ismuch more impacting than if we make a bottom up analysis considering assistive robotics for peoplesuffering from Alzheimer on one hand and protection of personal data for drone in police application.

    A top down analysis allows also easier linkage between different technological domains. In the aboveexample on personal data protection, it is easy to see that data protection issues in robotics are notdifferent than data protection issues with other technological domains. Therefore if there arenecessities to make an evolution of data protection regulation or legislation, there is no need to put theaccent or even mention robotics.

    2.3.2. Disjoint analysis of Ethical, Legal and Societal issues

    A disjoint analysis of ethical legal and societal (or social) issues in robotics is interesting andnecessary since issues are referring to different domains of expertise. Answers to these issues imply

    different analysis with different methods, different group of experts.

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    Ethical issues: will find answers in principles, duties (e.g. Hippocratic Oath), and eventuallysuggestions for regulation, or for new laws (bioethics),

    Legal issues will involve experts of different domains of laws, politicians, parliaments, and weresult in directives, regulation, laws

    Societal issues necessitate the participation of all stakeholders in a domain. Solutions mayfind solutions in actions from the stakeholders. E.g. robotics is a job killer is contradicted by

    the recent Martech study [22] for IFR2

    .Examining Ethical, Legal and Societal issues separately focusses the analysis. It leads to a clearcomprehension and clarification of the questions raised and drives to organize recommendations,targeting domains of expertise for interventions.

    2.3.3. Issues specific to robotics

    Analysing Ethical Legal and Societal issues specificto robotics aims at understanding whether theissues raised are problems occurring because there is a robotic agent or whether these issues aremore general and could be raised for any other technical solution. Following this methodology doesnot mean we did not pay attention to general ELS issues. This approach means that we always try toguess if ELS issues disappear or not when we replace the word robot by device, robotics bytechnology, robotics expert by technology expert. In a way we project the domain of robotics into

    a wider domain including robotics.An advantage of this approach is to possibly lead to general and global purpose solutions if it can beshown that the issue raised concerns other technologies than robotics. One first consequence is tohelp raising solutions with a large impacting effect since they include different technologies. Anotherconsequence is that it leads to think about robotics as an ordinary technology not much different thanother technologies in terms of ELS impact or issues. For example: is usage of a robot feeder andethical issue? Some could say it is an attempt to human dignity. However, if we replace robot bymechanical device or animal the problem stays the same.

    An additional advantage is to allow comprehension of the issues. In the above example of mechanicalfeeding, we may be facing a societal issue rather than an ethical one. In fact, in recent investigations[29] people expressed their satisfaction of using mechanical feeder My Spoon because it wasprecisely preserving their dignity, avoiding exposing their dependency. Hence the issue raised by

    usage of mechanical feeder is much more societal issue than an ethical issue: how can our societydeal with the growth of elderly dependent people? Political decisions are expected.

    2.4. Limits of this documentThis report deals with short or mid-term visions of robotics. We excluded the case studies related tofuturistic visions of robotics like post-humans. We also excluded from our study military robotics.

    In this document we focus on applied ethics. We concentrate on ethical issues in robotics (technology)and not on the way ethical issues should be taken into account (normative ethics) nor on the study ofthe concepts (meta-ethics).

    In English the distinction between social and societal is not always made. In this document we will usethe term societal. Societal issues will refer to the impact on society (e.g. employment, environment,

    sustainable development) of robotics in all the aspects of its activity (research, industry, usage).

    2International Federation of Robotics

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    3. MethodologyThe methodology followed in the production of this report started with an analysis of the state of the artfollowed up by the creation of a task force and concluded by the production of the report constitutingthe current deliverable.

    State of art analysisA survey of the European initiatives (e.g. Roboethics, Ethicbots [17], EURON Roboethics roadmap[37], ELS issues in the SRA [2]), documents and methodologies (e.g. the triaging methodology) so fardeveloped regarding the connection between robotics and ELS issues in robotics.

    Creation of a task force of ELS issues experts

    The number of people in this task force was limited in order to be efficient and reactive in thedocument production and control. Since the ELS issues involve several disciplines, this task forceincluded sociologists, lawyers, physicians, rehabilitation technologists, insurance experts and expertsfrom robotics. First contacts with potential experts have been made and a first meeting has been held.The roles of this task force of external experts were:

    To read the documents produced, suggest modification and provide comments

    To provide advices on the methodology To provide advices on the action to take and choices to make To evaluate and rank potential case studies To contribute to the debates organised together with the euRobotics members during meetings

    such as the Annual European Robotics Forum meetings To select case studies and assist in the identification of critical issues To debate about the case studies within the task force and with the community To assist in the production of the final report with the proposed roadmap of corrective actions

    The list of experts involved is illustrated on the figure below

    Figure 1: Expert network

    Production of the final report

    The final report does not pretend to be an exhaustive presentation of the ELS issues in robotics; thegoal is too vast and unreachable for the three year duration of the project. The objective of this reportis rather to select some representative, actual and particularly limiting matters to propose some

    concrete and reasonably accessible solutions and roadmap. The complete list is presented in thefollowing section.

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    Selection of case studies

    Since the duration of the project was limited, the ELS studies focused at the beginning on some casestudies chosen with experts. The analysis of the case studies aimed at circumscribing ELS issues atan early stage of the project in order to orient discussions, select at best the task force. The casestudies selected at the beginning of the project were the following:

    Domestic service robotics Personal assistive robots

    Professional service and security robotics

    Robot for co-working

    The use cases above were meant to help to focus the effort to elaborate an action plan to overcomeELS issues with the idea to generalize the analysis made to represent more paradigmatic solutionsand enable to propose a roadmap that can be generalized to a wider set of use cases.

    This approach was abandoned for several reasons:

    Experts did not agree to select representative case studies Case study approach appeared to be counterproductive to define general roadmap useful for

    robotics as a whole. Whatever the case study, it appeared that concepts and issues raised could only represent

    some narrow and arbitrary matters leaving some questions with no answers and unsatisfyingfor a majority of robotics experts (autonomous transport, security robotics, )

    Figure 2: methodology

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    4. Ethical issues in robotics

    4.1. FocusThis deliverable carries on appliedorprofessional ethicsand not in normative ethics. That is, we

    focused our interest in right or wrong or just and unjust practice regarding robotics and not indiscussing the norms to follow to respect good practice in robotics. We are interested in discussingwhat are the existing ethical issues in robotics and what are the ethical issues specific to robotics.

    4.2. DiversityEvery moral theory (virtue ethics, deontology or consequentialism) are promoting values [13]. Thesevalues have changed in time and can be diverse according to culture. Ethics returns to duties we haveregarding ourselves or others which are not dictated by laws [34].

    Aristotle considers ethics in a very large perspective originating from the observation that every mandesires a happy life. Moral virtues are states of character lying at the mean between extremes ofexcess and deficiency

    For Epicure our goal should be to reach a good life and happiness. The right mean consists inavoiding violence and stay with people having the same ideas than ours. As demanded by our healthand our good relationship with our relatives, we should act with moderation when in search of pleasureand nothing that does not harm to anybody should be considered as forbidden.

    Stoicism compared philosophy to the human body

    Logics is the skeleton; it concerns thinking well Physics is the flesh; it deals with well ordering Ethics is the soul; it deals with well living

    For stoicism ethics, goodness, justice is to be at one owns place. It is to be adjusted with the order ofthe cosmos. A just life is a life in harmony with nature in the sense of cosmic order [26, 20].

    For ancient Greek ethics was targeting a particular, singular excellence (self-concern), for Christians

    behaviours and life styles are supposed to be followed by everybody.Sartre [35] stated in 1950s that Nothing of the traditional moral can indicate what we have to do;there is no sign in the world; moral principles are always to abstract to indicate the way to take;everybody is enforced to invent its own moral, his law. Contemporary ethic thinking shows how thequestions of good and justice tend to formulate in a new way in a period where we cannot refer to non-changing and transcendental moral values [34]. The goal of ethics is to define what is good, startingfrom a reflection on effects of our acts according to Clotilde Leguil. Establishing references to definewhat is good and what is just is subject to many philosophical arguments which will not be debated inthis document. People interested in a more profound grounding, can refer, for example, to authors likeMichel Levinas (ethics of religious transcendence), Hans Jonas [27] (ethics of technological civilizationforbidding actions that would put in danger future generations [34]) or John Rawls [31] (theory ofjustice, according to who and action can be considered as good if it drives to increase the biggesthappiness for the biggest number of people [34]).

    4.3. Which Values?Thinking of what is good or just causes one to think about the valuesmaking the references of ethicalanalysis. As we have seen above these values differ a lot according to the cultural context we are in.In our analysis, we propose is to rely on the values presented in the Charter of Fundamental Rights ofthe European Union which result from the constitutional traditions and international obligationscommon to the Member States, the Treaty on European Union, the Community Treaties, the EuropeanConvention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the Social Chartersadopted by the Community and by the Council of Europe and the case-law of the Court of Justice ofthe European Communities and of the European Court of Human Rights.

    The charter constitutes a set of universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity; it is

    based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law which are the result European Union spiritualand moral heritage. It has no constraining value.

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    The Charter contains seven titles. The first six titles deal with substantive rights: dignity, freedoms,equality, solidarity, citizens' rights and justice. The last title deals with the interpretation and applicationof the Charter.

    The first title, dignity, guarantees the right to life and prohibits torture, slavery, the deathpenalty, eugenic practices and production of human clones.

    The second title covers liberty, personal integrity, privacy, protection of personal data,marriage, thought, expression, assembly, education, work, property and asylum.

    The third title covers equalitybefore the law, prohibition of all discrimination including onbasis of disability, age and sexual orientation, cultural, religious and linguistic diversity, therights of children and the elderly.

    The fourth title covers social and workers' rightsincluding the right to fair workingconditions, protection against unjustified dismissal, and access to health care, social andhousing assistance.

    The fifth title covers the rights of the EU citizens such as the right to votein election to theEuropean Parliament and to move freelywithin the EU. It also includes several administrativerights such as a right to good administration, to access documents and to petition theEuropean Parliament.

    The sixth title coversjusticeissues such as the right to an effective remedy, a fair trial, to the

    presumption of innocence, the principle of legality, non-retrospectivity and double jeopardy.

    4.4. Ethical issues specific to roboticsEthical issues in robotics have been extensively analysed in the past and we can find many elementson the subject in the literature [36, 17, 37] and we will not recall them here. In this report our interest isabout case studies representing ethical issues specific to robotics. It is actually difficult to find someexample of ethical issue really specific to robotics. Most of the issues case studies described alsoconcern different sector than robotics.

    The paragraph below makes a brief and incomplete tour of some common application in roboticspresenting some typical ethical issues.

    4.4.1. Assistive robotics for elderly or disabled people

    Assistive robots are meant to compensate for deficiencies of elderly or handicapped people (projectsCOMPANIONABLE[4], FLORENCE[5] CARE-O-BOT[23], KOMPAfrom ROBOSOFT[10] SAM andAVISO [28].

    In terms ofprivacy

    Assistive robots carry different type of sensors to operate in the environment, avoid obstacles,navigate and perform actions. These sensors include video or time of flight cameras. It can also besensor allowing evaluation of the activity of a person relying on personal health data. Assistive robotsalso have capacities to store information acquired from sensors and capacities to communicatethrough wireless connections to servers. Combining these capacities drives to wonder about privacy ofpeople entering the field of action of the robots sensors. Privacy issues in assistive robotics are furtheremphasized since these assistive robots are most of the time mobile and moving in the environment.These capacities make assistive robots, vectors of potentially very intrusive in private life of patients,

    of care takers, and of people entering the field of perception of the machine. We frequently hearexpressions of the fears of these capacities perceived as threats for people. These fears and threatsare amplified by the image conveyed by popular movies, series or novels and fancies about robots.

    Resituating these privacy issues it is clear that they are not specific to robotics. These issues areraised in the same way when using cameras for fall detection of elderly people or activity following ininstitutions. Issues occur because of usage of sensors that can be used to record information aboutpeople.

    In terms of dignity

    It is sometimes argued that usage of assistive robotics may endanger human dignity since themachines could replace human assistance. Here again replacing assistive robot by technicalassistance demonstrates that robots are not the agent raising this ethical matter. It was also shown inrecent studies of the LIRECproject [29] that for a large majority of people the my spoon robot is on the

    opposite contributing to give them back their dignity providing opportunities to be independent and topreserve privacy when eating. The same observations were also made after the experimentations

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    conducted in France in rehabilitation centres inAVISOproject [28,32]with a large set of severelyhandicapped people. Patients always foresee the robotic assistant SAMas a means to get someprivacy and independence.

    4.4.2. Security robotics

    This kind of robots has to operate in scenarios involving different kind of agents, including human

    beings, sensors and robotic platforms. In particular they assist human workers in their activities as (ornearly as) a real co-worker, with also the advantages they do not get tired, do not know carelessnessor fear, they can be used (instead of human beings) for activities and tasks that are hazardous, boringand exhausting. Security robots can assist in the protection of a home, a site (e.g. an industrial site),an infrastructure or a country borders. They can operate alone or as group (as independent entities oras a swarm); they have to accomplish many heterogeneous tasks such as, first of all, gatheringinformation in order to perform a situation awareness and then making decisions in terms of doingcoherent and adequate actions.

    In terms ofprivacy

    Security robots, during their missions, of course have to face privacy issue strictly related to the largeamount of the data collected, where also recognizable people are involved. However, these issues arecomparable to those impacting existing security systems with data storage capabilities.Recently, bodies of the European Parliament have discussed the issue of automatic security systemsand have underlined the necessity for future further action and regulation for privacy-related issues inrelation to machine vision systems as technology develops (e.g. of automated algorithmic surveillancesuch as facial recognition or intelligent scene monitoring).

    4.4.3. Toy robotics

    Toy robots have already been on the market for several years. Toy robots can contribute to thepromotion and development of robotics. They can be elements helping to carry a good image ofrobotics and make the public know more about robots.

    In terms ofprivacy

    Toy robots raise the same matters than assistive robot when they possess sensors recording children.As shown above this is not specific to robotics since this issue arises with all sensors even if notinstalled on a robot.

    In terms of equality

    Toy robots raise the question of equity: most of the machines are expensive and purchasing is notpossible to all children. There is a risk of segregation in the population between children whoseparents are be able to buy robots and children whose parent cannot afford purchasing these costlymachines. Access to knowledge and control of robot at an early age will be different due to thepayment capacities of parents. This will certainly have consequences on the education andprofessional orientation. Toy robots could be a way to create barriers in the population in the sameway than computers and Internet generated the digital divide. However, while it is important to payattention that robotics is spread into the widest part of population, this equality issue raised by toy

    robot is not specific to robotics. There have always been expensive toys that a large part of thepopulation could not offer to pay to their children: toy cars, computers, electronic games.

    4.4.4. Sexual robotics

    Creators of sex robots apply technological advances in artificial intelligence to produce and marketsexual partners for consumers [24].

    In terms of dignity

    Sinziana Gutiu, in the 2012 We Robot conference explored the dignity issue linked to the usage ofsex robots in the context of relationships between men and women. The paper argues that sex robotswill foster antisocial behaviour in users and promote the idea that women are ever-consenting beings,leading to diminished consent in male-female sexual interaction. She observes that the negative

    gender stereotypes that women face are reproduced in the mere existence of female robots,comparing the comments made on male robot like Geminoid and female robot like Repliee Q2.Sinziana Gutiu points out that the harm caused by sex robots goes beyond pornography: because sex

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    robot interactions are complete physical and emotional encounter experiences, and because, theharm in pornography is based on the type of content in the material, while sex robot harm is triggeredby its very use. Sinziana Gutiu does not highlight differences between robotics and artificial devices ortechnical devices, which would shape the aspect of a human without being a robot. Her observationscould however well be applied to woman like artefact. Thus we also can observe that in that case theethical issue is addressing much more domains than robotics.

    4.4.5. Human extension, exoskeleton

    Ethical issues with exoskeleton or robotic-based human extension appear here:

    In terms of equality

    When people want to use the extra capacities provided by the machine in a competition. Is it ethic tolet people with exoskeleton compete with able people? The recent example of Oscar Pistorius usingpassive devices running at the Olympics with able people leads us to think that this issue is notspecific to robotics.

    In terms of dignity

    People suffering from Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) [25] (that is people willing to replace a validpart of their body because they are convinced it is a source of illness, of disabilities, of suffering (self-amputees)) are convinced that they would not feel pain if their member was replaced by an electronicdevice that could possibly extend their capacities. In the same idea Trans-humanism (abbreviated asH+ or h+), is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility anddesirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widelyavailable technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, andpsychological capacities [16]. Abolitionists propose paradise engineering, i,e., the use of technologieslike psycho-pharmaceuticals and genetic engineering to eliminate even the possibility of painfulsensations and emotions. Extropianism(advocating a proactive approach to human evolution),immortalism(a moral ideology based upon the belief that technological immortality is possible anddesirable),postgenderism(a social philosophy which seeks the voluntary elimination of gender in thehuman species), singularitarianism(a moral ideology based upon the belief that a technologicalsingularity is possible) are other examples of trans-humanism involving usage technology for humanenhancing.

    These practices or pathologies are not far away from current practices in body modification likesurgical augmentation, aesthetic surgery, tattooing, piercing. Hence these issues are not be specific torobotics because of the usage of robotics devices here or there.

    4.5. Conclusion on ethical issuesThe difficulty to find examples of ethical issues in robotics does not mean there are no ethicalissues in robotics. It simply means that, after all,robotics is not so different from any othersciences.Many issues seen as specific to robotics can and in some cases should be analysed in themore general perspective of relationship between human and science.

    Focusing on ethical issues as soon as we envisage using a robot for an application contributes tocarry a wrong image of robots. It conveys the idea that there are actually specific ethical issues inrobotics that would not be if we were to use a device.

    A consequence is that when studying ethical issue in robotics, one recommendation, in order to avoidstigmatization of robotics, is to preconize analysing whether the issue exists with some othertechnology. In that case it is an advantage to investigate the solutions chosen to answer these issuesin a perspective addressing technologies in general.

    The analysis in this report conducts to recommend defining clearly what are the values referred towhen analysing ethical issues. The report recommends relying on values presented in theFundamental Charter of Human Rightswhen examining Ethical issues because this charter isfounded on the indivisible, universal values.

    We also recommend to possibly resituating the ethical issues in a larger technological context,providing as a result, more impacting solutions to raised issues.

    We also preconize providing guidelines to help robotics developers and experts analysing ethicalissues,

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    5. Societal issues

    5.1. BackgroundSocietal implications and constraints are frequently under-estimated by the scientific or industrial

    robotics communities. This is probably largely due to people involved in robotics activities lackingknowledge on the way to address these issues. On the other hand, in the public many people areuncertain about robots and do not see the need or real benefit of having robots besides us at home, inthe streets, or at work. To a large extent the public has often a wrong image of robotics, mostly comingfrom science fiction books or movies (I Robot, Blade Runner, Star Wars, Forbidden Planet,etc). Thesefictions and novels carry the image that robots are capable of many more things than they can actuallydo. This can be a handicap when the public faces real robots, which do not act as expected. Somepeople think robots are capable of overpowering Mankind (like HAL in 2001 a Space Odyssey). Therobotics community needs to make efforts to better communicate to the public the reality of robots andwhat they can be useful for. If this effort is not made, it can even, in the worst-case, lead to a rejectionof the technology and to a movement that seriously hinders developments in robotics. It must beavoided that robotics makes the same mistakes and hence hits the same barriers as geneticallymodified food did.

    5.2. ApproachTo circumscribe societal issues two actions were conducted

    A dialog about societal issues with the robotics community. The elements were essentiallycollected during the workshops of San Sebastian and the workshop of Vasteras organizedduring the European Robotics Forums (section 5.2.1)

    A survey of the public opinion on some typical robotics matters (section 5.2.2)

    5.2.1. Challenges identified during the workshops

    The workshops organized by the project allowed to identify several societal issues in robotics andchallenges to address to overcome these identified societal issues.

    Challenge 1: Awareness of the impact of ELS issues on research in robotics

    The observation

    There is a general lack of interest of students, particularly at PhD level, about ELS issues. Students donot measure the impact of the ELS issues on robotics or research and development.

    This was mentioned by several participants of the ELS issues workshop that took place during theEURON / EUROP Annual meeting 2010 [3]

    The reason

    This seems to come mainly from a lack of information on the potential impact of ELS issues.

    A solution

    Provide an outline on the ELS issues and robotics. Describe some actual constraints regarding ELSissues regarding robotics research and applications, the key actors, etc.

    How? It could be undertaken through special courses during Master or PhD studies, and informationshould also be easily accessible (website). The way this information should be provided was notdiscussed because of the limited time for the workshop. Propositions will be made in othersymposiums and this question may be sent to a mailing list.

    Challenge 2: Provide trust for domestic service robotics

    The observation

    Lack of trust is the main reason why people would not want, would not need or would reject a robot ina domestic application.

    The reasons

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    Lack of trust can arise for various reasons, which were discussed within the working group. Thesereasons each represent several technical challenges:

    Privacy: how can people ensure that a robot preserves necessary privacy?

    Safety: Physical interaction between humans and robots represents a major challenge if the robotis also capable of undertaking significant physical tasks. We also need better methods for

    eliminating safety related failures and for ensuring no erratic behaviour Robustness: how can we make sure that the robot behaves in an appropriate way whatever the

    circumstances? For example simple changes in lighting conditions could currently causesignificantly divergent behaviour.

    Security: certify the robot does not bump into you, does not damage the furniture, and does notdamage itself

    Data protection: how can one make sure that important data will not be destroyed?

    Usefulness

    Some solutions

    Solutions to overcome these challenges are vast and various. They depend largely on the technologychosen and cannot be detailed in this paper.

    Some psychological considerations might also affect the perceived level of reliance granted of a robot.Mike Walters said that, according to his organisations experience [19] people are more confident withbig robots than with smaller ones, they tend to consider small robots like children and bigger ones likeadults. Humanoid robots are perceived as more expert than non-zoomorphic robots.

    Challenge 3: Engender trust for cooperative robots

    The observation

    People do not trust working beside a powerful and very fast machine.

    The reasons

    The problem is different than with domestic robots since trust concerns fewer technical challenges.Some solutions

    Safety: reduce the number of failure, ensure no erratic behaviour

    Robustness: how can we make sure that the robot behaves the same way whatever thecircumstances? Changes in lighting conditions

    Security: certify the robot does not bump into you, does not damage nearby equipment, and doesnot damage itself

    Challenge 4: Make the certification of robotic devices and machines simpler and quicker

    The observation

    In Europe the certification dissipates time and effort in every country.

    The reasons

    Laws and regulations are different among the European countries and this lack of homogeneity forcertification organisations in Europe implies a multiplicity of rules that hinder the development ofservice robotics. Compared to the US, where the legislation across the states is common and reduced,the European legislation appears to be quite burdensome, obstructing innovation. Japan, US andKorea all appear to have much lighter regulations than Europe. Legislation should be a tool helpingthe innovation and should define clear rules to follow. It should anticipate or closely follow theemergence of some technologies and not just wait for the technologies to appear before saying theyare not legal.

    Some solutions

    Increase the responsibility of the people programming the robots. Having people, with adegree, giving the approval could be a solution for some applications (co-working). It would not apply

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    to all applications though (for instance there are moves to reduce the IT burden of automation in thefood industry to increase take-up). A comparison is made with people operating cranes.

    Foster the certification of equipment including software. Use proof of program or othermethods to certify software behaviour in any circumstances.

    5.2.2. Blind surveys

    During the ELS issues workshop that took place during the EURON / EUROP Annual meeting 2010

    [3], in order to open the discussion and ask for the audience opinion, a questionnaire was prepared tolet people freely express their views on this topic. The questionnaires, which covered challenges,hindering gaps, and constraints of each product vision of the five sectors of the EUROP StrategicResearch Agenda, as well as some general issues, were distributed at the beginning of the workshopand collected at the end.

    The majority of the people who answered were working in a research industrial or academicorganization; the professional fields represented were mainly service and security, aeronautics andindustry in general. Some of the questions of the first section of the questionnaire were:

    Have your reference customers or users mandatory demands regarding ELS impacts?

    Do you consider the respect of the ELS issues a major enabler for your applications orproducts?

    Do you consider the respect of the ELS issues an obstacle for your applications or products? In your opinion, which specific technologies or components would be most impacted by the

    ELS issues? Try to provide examples of constraints that limits the applicability of thosetechnologies

    Most of the people are dealing with ELS issues during their working activities and think ELS areenablers and not obstacles to their own applications or products.

    The high cognitive technologies, especially when they interact directly with the human beings, are themost linked with ELS aspects.

    All the service and security applications identified at that moment (surgical robotics, assistive roboticsfor the elderly, handicapped, aerial surveillance, professional cooperative robotics, disastermanagement, inspection of people and goods) are considered needy of an ELS assessment,

    especially the assistive robotics for elderly and handicapped and the aerial surveillance.

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    Many useful elements were gathered in the second section of the questionnaire, where theparticipants were asked to identify the challenges, hindering gaps and constraints for all the fiverobotics segments (Industrial, Professional Service, Domestic Service, Security and Space). Particularhighlights emerging from this section were safety, social acceptance, trust, privacy, data integrity andsecurity protection, legal impact and responsibilities, and actions that a robot is allowed to undertakewithout human supervision.

    In the last section of the questionnaire, some general questions were proposed:

    Is ethics applied to robotics a problem for the individual scientist / engineer, the end user orconcerned third parties?

    Is it a social problem to be addressed at institutional level?

    How far can we go in embodying ethics in a robot?

    Which type of ethics is the correct one for robotics?

    How contradictory is, on one hand, the need to implement ethics in robot and, on the otherhand, the development of robot autonomy?

    Who is responsible for actions carried out by human-robot hybrid teams?

    Should one enforce a human-in-the-control-loop requirement without exception?

    Is it necessary to assess ELS implications for the non-ready, i.e. low Technology ReadinessLevels (TRL, the maturity level of a technology) technologies too?

    How does the methodological approach regarding the ELS issues change in relation withTRL?

    Analysing the results obtained, it is possible to note that ethics applied to robotics needs to beaddressed up to the institutional level; in the relation between autonomy and ethics, participants saythere are no contradictions, keeping in mind that safety and certification cannot be left out ofconsideration and the responsibility of the autonomous machines behaviours belongs to the machinesdesigners / programmers. With regard to the Technology Readiness Levels and ELS, it comes outthat, in general, the ELS implications have greater immediacy and impact for the higher TRL values,

    i.e. high maturation levels.During the euRobotics Forum 2011 that took place in Vasteras, Sweden another questionnaire wasdistributed (an online version was also realized). The information collected, that were more practicalcan be summarized in the following way:

    The majority of the industry customers still disregards the ELS impact of the products/technologies

    ELS issues are seen as an OBSTACLE for the introduction of robotic devices in the market

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    It is necessary to assess ELS implications (like for instance the EMS issues) as soon as possible alsofor the non-ready (i.e. low Technology Readiness Levels, TRL) technologies too, in order to keep intoaccount these issues as soon as possible, avoiding problems that it will be harder to solve when theproduct/technology it is nearly read to be commercialized.

    What is missing now is a public debate and agreement on how the future users (i.e. the generalpublic!) want autonomous robotic products to be designed considering their impact on human-humansocial co-existence, not only the robot-human individual relation and this thing should start at a veryearly stage.

    If technology, independently of TRL, is used in real applications where ELS issues are relevant, ELSissues should be taken into account with appropriate methodologies.

    With regards to the famous Asimovs rules and the possible relevance for robots being besides ahuman, the participants in general think they can be seen as a starting point and an inspiration fordressing up future legal codes, but also very difficult to apply them and exceptions could bedangerous; they are ill-posed and incomplete, and it easy to find paradoxical situations, where no wayout is viable; they must be adapted in a more actual way.

    Currently, a relevant percentage of participants own a robot at home.

    Almost all the people are willing to accept a robot in at home.

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    Functions that a robot at home can have:

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    In general, the working robots should be mainly used in the following scenarios: Surveillance, Searchand rescue, Fire fighting, Intervention in hazardous environment

    Most of people would like to see greater use of robots in the society

    but thinks that robots will be pervasive in the society only in 10 or 20+ years.

    The main fears (and challenges) that are listed by the participants can be summarized in the followingway:

    Safety

    Trust & Reliability

    Security (fears of robot software viruses)

    Loss of human responsibility, loss of diversity, loss of multi-dimensional thought

    Risk of making people lazier

    Concerning the aspect that a robot should have, interestingly, people say it is not so important and/orthey should appear as machines and not as humanoids or pets.

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    Most people would have no problem to be helped and assited by a robot in case he/she becamephysically or mentally impaired, so without dignity issues (on the contrary, maybe a robot assistant canbe accepted in a easier way).

    Other general comments taken from the audience can be summarized in the following bullets:

    A solid legal regulation, clearly defining the responsibilities is absolutely necessary(e.g. behaviour and priorities in unforeseen situations, what happens regardinginjuries caused by the robot to human)

    It necessary to define the right design principles based on a common and responsiblevision of what the robotic society should be for humans

    The ethical issue regarding the education of young people to use robotics

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    Personal Robots & Robot Companions: "Insincere" emotional attachment;Replacement of human social contact by robots

    Personal Robots: Replacement of nursing aids, careers,

    Personal Robots: Necessity to present the robot as being complementary to thehuman assistance

    Robot Companions: Fake image of reality of human contact increasing isolation

    Autonomous vehicles: Safety; Certification of vehicles; Insurance; Black box torecorder data

    Security: Can a robot wound / hurt a person (even a criminal)?

    Security Behaviour and priorities in unforeseen situation

    Security: Data protection for surveillance data; Alert or intervene decisions; Dual useof technology in systems with offensive capability

    5.3. Conclusions

    Societal challenges are probably the most hindering obstacles for the development robotics amongstthe ELS issues. Societal issues in robotics are scarcely addressed and the opinion we hear aboutrobotics in the public carry a lot of wrong ideas (robotics cut jobs off) and fake images (robots will overpower humans). Efficient actions should be undertaken to go against the wrong image carried out byrobotics in the public. Martech study for IFR about job creation is one emblematic example of actionsto be undertaken. Regular communication to the public, through for example the European RoboticsWeek organized by euRobotics about what robotics is, what are the capacities of a robot and theservices it can bring is another example. Regular contacts between sociologist, technician should alsobe encouraged to make the social science community and robotics community learn to know eachother and carry the same message. These efforts need to be made through all European countries totake into account the diversity of apprehension of robotics. The impact of robotics in the society andthe issues raised should also be resituated in a general technological context in order to avoid

    considering robotics as a weird technology and rather some evolution of the current technologies.Regular surveys could also be a way to understand the vision, the expectations the evolution of publicopinion about robotics.

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    6. Legal issuesVery little information is available on Legal issues in service robotics for the moment. BesidesAsimovs laws, it seems that the interest on this subject has only started recently. Currently the legalimpact of robotics is primarily a matter of certification. The KUKA Robocoaster safety for example, is

    guaranteed by certification from the German technical inspectorate TV in accordance with EN 13814/ DIN 4112 (a standard for the safety of fairground and amusement park machinery and structures).The lack of a legal framework for robotics can increase dramatically the time to market. There is hugefield of investigation on Legal issues in robotics.

    The part on legal issues of this report is annexed to this document in the suggestion for a greenpaper. Two publications were made on this subject during the project: [15, 21]. Concluding elementsare recalled below.

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    7. Conclusions, priorities and suggestions for furtherproceedings

    In this document, we presented the results undertaken in the project euRobotics (euRoboticscoordination action, 2012) on ethical, legal and societal issues hindering the development of robotics

    in Europe. This document can be taken as a guidebook for robotics community to know basics onethical, legal and societal issues in robotics as well as for lawyers as a reference to matters thatconcern robotics and its development in Europe.

    The specific efforts on legal issues in robotics resulted in a suggestionfor a green paper on legalissues in robotics extracted from this deliverable to constitute a separate document.

    This document had a special focus on ELS issues specificto robotics.

    In the conclusions, we recommend relying on values presented in the Fundamental Charter ofHuman Rightswhen examining Ethical issues. We also recommend clearly specifying the ethicalissues addressed when analysing ethical issues on specific case studies.

    We also support the idea of keeping thetop down approachwhen analysing ELS issues in order toaddress the widest spectrum of robotics applications; that is to start from the ELS concepts as a

    framework to analyse issues.We also recommend analysing the possibility toresituate ethical, legal and societal issues in alarger technological context than roboticsin order to provide, as a result, more impacting solutionsor to use already existing solutions. Making a link between robotics and other technological domainswould lead to avoid considering robotics as a unique, distinctive and strangetechnology inorder to make people trustrobots and robotics.

    For future work, we preconize providing comprehensible guidelinesand a general methodology tohelp robotics developers and experts analysing ELS issues to make lively the ELS issues in robotics.

    For law issues, we propose in the green paper suggestionsome further investigations on IPR, labourlaw and non-contractual liability and on the concept of electronic personhood. Besides these specificand domain dependant suggestions, we also propose more general tracks like harmonizing

    European legislation and regulationsin order to facilitate the emergence of robotics in Europe.

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    8. Appendix A CommunicationBischoff, R., Pegmann, G., Leroux, C., Labruto, R., & al. (2010). euRobotics Shaping the future of

    European robotics. ISR/ROBOTIK. San Francisco.

    Boscarato, C., Caroleo, F., Labruto, R., Leroux, C., & Santosuosso , A. (2012). Robots, market and

    civil liability: a European perspective. 21st IEEE International Symposium on Robot andHuman Interactive Communication. Paris.

    Gnther, J.-P., Muench, F., Beck, S. B., Loeffler, S., Leroux, C., & Labruto , R. (2012). Issues ofPrivacy and Electronic Personhood in Robotics. 21st IEEE International Symposium on Robotand Human Interactive Communication. Paris.

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    9. Appendix B - Bibliography

    [1] First international symposium on roboethics. San Remo, jan 2004.

    [2] Strategic research agenda for robotics (sra 2009). http://www.robotics-platform.eu/cms/index.php?idcat=26, jul 2009.

    [3] Europ/euron annual meeting, san sebastian. http://www.euron-europ-2010.eu/en/home, mar2010.

    [4] Companionable project. http://www.companionable.net/, dec 2012.

    [5] The florence project. http://www.florence-project.eu/, dec 2012.

    [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ethics, dec 2012.

    [7] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/thique, dec 2012.

    [8] Iso 26000 guidance standard, dec 2012.

    [9] Lirec project. http://lirec.eu/project, dec 2012.

    [10] Robosoft web site. http://www.robosoft.com/eng/, dec 2012.

    [11] Sera project. http://project-sera.eu/, dec 2012.

    [12] Isaac Asimov. I, Robot. 1950.

    [13] Jean-Cassien Billier. Introduction lthique. Presses Universitaires de France, 2010.

    [14] Rainer Bischoff, Pegmann Geoff, Christophe Leroux, Roberto Labruto, and al. eurobotics shaping the future of european robotics. In ISR/ROBOTIK, San Francisco, 2010.

    [15] Chiara Boscarato, Franco Caroleo, Roberto Labruto, Christophe Leroux, and AmedeoSantosuosso. Robots, market and civil liability: a european perspective. In 21st IEEE InternationalSymposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, Paris, September 2012.

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    10. Appendix D GlossaryIn this section we provide some definitions, as they are commonly used in the technical community.None of them is carved in stone, and some of them can be easily source of endless discussions.Let's take them as a way to feel concepts shared in the technical community. Some of the definitions

    reported below are derived from documents available from the EUROP site where you can also findother definitions (http://www.robotics-platform.eu/cms/upload/SRA/Methodology/2009-07-07_Appendix_to_the_SRA_for_robotics_in_Europe_-_Glossary_-_V1.pdf). Other sources ofdefinitions are the ISO document ISO 8373:2012 (Robots and robotic devices Vocabulary) as wellas ISO/DIS 13482 (Robots and robotic devices Safety requirements for non-industrial robots Non-medical personal care robot)

    Actuator

    An actuator is a device that can produce force or torque that can be used to move parts of a robot.These can be: pneumatic actuators, electrical motors, etc.

    Agent (legally speaking)

    An entity able to do, considering its actions in the area of legal responsibility.

    Area of ethics

    Philosophers divide ethics in domains whose bounds are not always perfectly clear [13], [6].

    Meta-ethics: is the study of concepts, of judgements and moral reasoning, Normative ethics: which concern the elaboration of norms prescribing what is right or

    wrong, what must be done or what must not Applied ethics: application of the two domains above to specific problems (feminism,

    environment, biology, professional ethics etc.) Descriptive ethics: is sometimes added as a separate area, is the study of peoples

    beliefs about morality

    In other words one defines:

    Descriptive ethics: What do people think is right? Normative (prescriptive) ethics: How should people act? Applied ethics: How do we take moral knowledge and put it into practice? Meta-ethics: What does 'right' even mean?

    Autonomous robot

    An autonomous robot is able to perform a task in a possibly incompletely known environmentwithout human intervention during the process. In the community, this is often opposed toprogrammed robot. Both autonomous and programmed robots are programmed, in the sensethat are controlled by a computer that executes instructions to make them acting, but aprogrammed robot is intended to work in a very well known, possibly structured, environmentsuch as a production cell in a car factory, performing a repetitive well specified set of actions. Forthis latter kind of robots, a normative corpus is already available, so we will not consider them: they

    usually have to work in places where people are not allowed to enter when they are operating. Ingeneral, they are considered as devices, similarly to milling machines and the like. Mostautonomous robots are programmed robots and this implies a predictable and deterministicbehaviour when facing a given situation described by known values for the inputs. Beside errors inthe program or intentional presence of random actions, the only source of unpredictability residesin the uncertainty of perception and uncertainty of actuation. For instance, let us assume ourautonomous robot is supposed to grasp a red ball, if it is not able to distinguish red from orangebecause of insufficient lighting, then the final outcome might not be correct; at the same time if theball is slippery our robot might miss the grasp resulting again in an incorrect (unexpected) result.Finally, a possible source of unpredictable behaviour (at design time) is the case of learning robots.Sometimes, an autonomous robot is also called a robotic agent, putting in evidence the ability toselect actions.

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    Behaviour

    Robot behaviour is the way of acting of a robot as perceived by an external observer. This can bedescribed at a low level (e.g., the robot is entering a door) or at high level (e.g.: the robot ismonitoring the health status of its owner). Sometimes it can be described by establishing arelationship between observed situations and actions. (e.g., the robot avoids obstacles that are onits path to the goal, or the robot goes to its owner when it is asked to). Often the term behaviour

    is also used to refer to the behavioural modules that implement behaviour, i.e. a set of programsor operational knowledge that, when operative, can implement the behaviour. Often, manybehavioural modules are implemented on a robot and each of them is triggered by a specificsituation.

    Care robots

    Def. CR1: Care robots are able to support people with disabilities and elderly in improving their wayof living. This includes wheelchairs, feeders, system to move people, robotic arms to bring or getobjects, but also exoskeletons and robots to provide psychological aid.Def. CR2: Care robots are able to take care of people. This includes also robots able to interactwith people, in general able to understand, or at least manage, the essence of taking care, suchas robotic companions and some robotic pets.

    Civil law

    It is a legal system originating in Western Europe, within the framework of late Roman law. Its mostrelevant feature is that core principles are codified into a referable system which serves as theprimary source of law.

    Civil liability

    Legal liability which is not in criminal law. This liability may be in contract, tort, restitution, or variousother sub-areas.

    Cognitive robot

    A cognitive robot is an autonomous robot that exploits processes analogous to cognitiveprocesses. In particular, this term is referred to robots able to reason.

    Common law

    It is a legal system originating in UK and mostly used in almost all English-speaking countries. Theintellectual framework comes from judge-made decisional law which gives precedential authority toprior Court decisions on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on differentoccasions (doctrine of judicial precedent).

    Consumer law

    An area of law which regulates relationships between individual consumers and the businessesthat sells those goods and services.

    Contractual liability

    This kind of civil liability arises when there is any failure to perform an obligation under the contract,

    whether or not excused, and includes delayed performance, defective performance and failure toco-operate in order to give full effect to the contract.

    Criminal Law:

    The area of law in which it is decided if someone has committed a criminal offence and is criminallyliable for it.

    Data privacy law

    The area of law that covers the protection of the right to privacy with respect to the processing ofpersonal data.

    Ethics

    Science of good and evil [33] Is in the area of ethics to determine what is good or bad[18]

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    The goal of ethics is to indicate how human beings should behave, act and be towardsothers people and towards what surrounds them[7]

    European Directive

    A legislative act of the European Union, which requires Member States to achieve a particularresult without dictating the means of achieving that result. A Directive normally leaves Member

    States with a certain amount of leeway as to the exact rules to be adopted.European Regulation

    A legislative act of the European Union which immediately becomes enforceable as law in allMember States simultaneously

    European Recommendation

    A legislative act of the European Union without binding force.

    Green paper (Green paper)

    A green paper released by the European Commission is a discussion document intended tostimulate debate and launch a process of consultation, at European level, on a particular topic. Agreen paper usually presents a range of ideas and is meant to invite interested individuals or

    organizations to contribute views and information. It may be followed by a white paper, an officialset of proposals that is used as a vehicle for their development into law.See also white paper

    Labour Law

    Laws which address the legal rights of, and restrictions on, working people.

    Learning

    Process of modification of the knowledge base of the robot gained through the interaction with theenvironment (including people) that may produce a persistent change in the robot behaviour. Thisincludes learning data, such as a map, and learning behaviours, such as mappings from data toactions.

    LegalAccording to law, not in violation of law or anything (Dictionary of law)

    Legal Person

    An entity possessing legal rights and obligations legal personhood is subscribed to entities by thelegislator (based on practicability and social acceptance)

    Negligence

    A deficit of taking the required care in a situation in which there is a duty to take care causing injuryto another person.

    Non contractual liability

    This kind of civil liability arises when an agent intentionally or negligently causes damage due tothe violation of a right which is legally protected regardless the existence of a contract (e.g.physical integrity).

    Normative ethic

    The central debate of normative ethics is the question opposing

    Virtue ethics: in which moral evaluation focuses on the inherent character of a personrather than on specific actions

    Deontology:in which moral evaluation carries on the actions according to imperativenorms, to duties

    Consequentialism: in which moral evaluation carries on actions and among theircontribution to improve the state of the world. Consequentialism include utilitarianismwhich hold that an action is right if it leads to the happiness of the greatest number of

    people

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    Personal data

    Any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.

    Planning

    Planning is the computation and selection of tasks, policies and procedures for goal-directed robotbehaviour.This includes path planning, motion planning, grasp planning, task pl