Roboethics [TC Spotlight]

Roboethics is not the ethics of robots nor any artificial ethics, but it is the human ethics of the robots´ designers, manufacturers, and users. Robotics research and application are increasingly raising ethical implications, related to the more strict interaction between robots and human beings, as well as to the ever closest interaction between robotics itself and biological science. Progress in the field of computer science and telecommunications has allowed us to endow machines with enough intelligence so that they can act autonomously. However, as the application field for robots is widening and the robot is coming out of the factory halls, new challenges are seen both from the technical and the social point of view. Therefore, we can forecast that in our century humanity will coexist with the first aliens we have ever come in contact with-robots.