Robots, market and civil liability: A European perspective

Robotics is now having an exponential growth and the achievement of the singularity (the point where the artificial systems´ capabilities will reach and exceed humans´ ones) in the course of a few decades is expected to be on the forefront. From a legal point of view several questions arise, such as (among others) the market standards to apply to such entities, the range of safety requirements that should be ensured, the type of regulation in terms of liability and the level of subjectivity that can be recognized. This paper aims to offer a general framework to explore existing laws, from a European perspective, and check them out to verify if these rules are able to face some critical aspects involving robots, such as consumer market and civil liability.