“Think and do the right thing” — A Plea for morally competent autonomous robots

Autonomous robots are increasingly employed in human societies without any provisions for “moral behavior” (other than some implicit architectural protective measures such as to avoid collisions or to follow human orders). However, being part of human societies, these robots will inevitably face morally charged situations, if not moral dilemmas where no simple solution exist, and thus need to be able to handle them appropriately. We argue for the need to incorporate explicit mechanisms for moral competence into robotic architectures and briefly sketch several components that are required for such moral competence.