EC Euron Roboethics Atelier Project
The Euron Roboethics Atelier was a European project founded by EURON (European Research Robotics Network) to define the first Roadmap of roboethics.
School of Robothics was the coordinator of an the international debate on ethical issues in Advanced robotics, and organized in Genoa the Atélier on roboethics, a week of works of fifty scientists from both scientific and humanistic disciplines.
Robotics is rapidly becoming one of the leading field of science and technology. We can forecast that in the XXI century humanity will coexist with the first alien intelligence we have ever come in contact with -robots. It will be an event rich in ethical, social and economic problems. Public opinion is already asking questions such as: "Could a robot do "good" or "evil"?"; "Could robots be dangerous for humankind?".
In January 2004, Scuola di Robotica organized the First International Symposium on Roboethics (www.roboethics.org). The success and the important follow-ups of that event encouraged the participants to design a more continuous and systematic approach: the Roboethics Atelier inside EURON.
The first aim of it was to produce a Roadmap of Roboethics, and lay the foundation for the creation of the Roboethics Committee inside the "Beyond Robotics Initiative".
The Atelier laid the appropriate framework in EURON II to address the ethical issues in the projects COGNIRON (Cognitive Robot Companion) and NEUROBOTICS (the fusion of Neuroscience and Robotics for augmenting human capabilities). The Roboethics Roadmap and the results of the researches done under the Atelier were presented during the Roboethics Workshop, ICRA'07, Roma, Italy.
The Roadmap second release 1.1 was circulated among about 50 experts in Computer Ethics and Scholars of Philosophy, plus some roboticists from the EURON Meeting in Palermo. Their comments resulted in version 2 of the Roadmap.
The final version of the Euron Roboethics Roadmap (Release 2.0) was officially presented during the Roboethics Workshop at ICRA07, organized by the IEEE TC on Roboethics.