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c-Politics-Law-Society
Would you trust a robot to take care of your grandpa?
Open Roboethics Initiative
11 Nov 2014
One of the driving forces of social, interactive robotics is the issue of impending labour shortage, which is projected to be one of the major and inevitable consequences of the ageing population phe...
Transport Canada relaxes commercial drone regulations, increases focus on academic use
Diana Marina Cooper
10 Nov 2014
Last week, Transport Canada announced upcoming changes to the regulatory framework surrounding drones. Transport Canada’s exemption notification simultaneously signals a relaxation of commercial dro...
RoboLaw: Why and how to regulate robotics
Andrea Bertolini
29 Oct 2014
The issue is often raised whether robotics needs to be regulated. While some believe that there is no need to intervene because regulation may stifle innovation, others believe that indeed there is ne...
When it comes to regulating robotics, multiple questions are at issue
Frank Tobe
28 Oct 2014
Earlier this month the Brookings Institute published a paper by Ryan Calo titled "The case for a federally regulated robotics commission". As much as I appreciate the thoughtfulness and readability of...
A horse of a different color: Ryan Calo on What robotics can learn from cyberlaw | Slate
CIS Blog
27 Oct 2014
In the early days of dot-com, the law found the Internet unsettling. That a buyer in one location could access the website of a seller in any other forced courts to revisit basic questions of jurisdic...
This military robotics company vows to never make a killer robot | Fast Company
CIS Blog
23 Oct 2014
Cars are already close to driving themselves down the highway. How far are we then from military weapons systems that decide on their own when and where to fire?
"You want the scary answer?" asks C...
Driven by care needs, will it be the booming senior population that spurs wider acceptance of robots?
Abate De Mey
19 Oct 2014
Tony Prescott, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Director of the Sheffield Center of Robotics believes that [tweetquote]the medical industry could be at the forefront of changing the public per...
Robocars: A natural fit for retirement communities
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
18 Oct 2014
As people get older, they start losing their ability to drive: they start having trouble seeing in the dark and they stop driving at night; they also make mistakes, causing other people to hit them, a...
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Engaging Girls in Robotics, with Hannah and Rachael Tipperman, Ross Mead and Elizabeth Croft
AJung Moon
17 Oct 2014
Earlier this year, the Robots Podcast team came across a story about two 17 year old twin sisters who started their own robotics outreach group. The story about the Tipperman sisters got us curious. W...
Friday Q&A: Law Professor Ryan Calo | Roll Call
CIS Blog
17 Oct 2014
Ryan Calo is an assistant law professor at the University of Washington School of Law whose academic work looks at the legal and policy aspects of robotics. Technocrat talked to him about what he anti...
25 women in robotics you need to know about (2014)
Just last week at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella gave women some questionable career advice: "It's not really about asking for the raise, but knowing...
Robots are not here to take your jobs | USA Today
Hallie Siegel
15 Oct 2014
Robots are not here to steal our jobs, nor are we at risk of any other en masse robotic movement reliant upon self-determined mechanized cognizance.
In fact, nearly 100% of contemporary robotic tec...
Livestream: Cato Institute on “Policy implications of self-driving cars”
Robohub Editors
14 Oct 2014
October 14, 2014 12:00PM EST Featuring Randal O’Toole, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute; Marc Scribner, Research Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute; and Adam Thierer, Senior Research Fellow, ...
Nursing Grandma with a robot
Mark Stephen Meadows
13 Oct 2014
[tweetquote]All this talk about being replaced by robots is getting old.[/tweetquote]...
Reader poll: How much control should a bathing robot have?
Open Roboethics Initiative
01 Oct 2014
http://youtu.be/0ac2qwStrdo
A few years ago, researchers at the University of British Columbia (AJung Moon, Peter Danielson and Mike Van der Loos) studied the public acceptance of a number of diff...
Poll shows bots seen more as appliance than companion, but still good for whole family
Open Roboethics Initiative
29 Sep 2014
Primary reasons for considering to purchase a robot for the home
Why would you want to buy a robot for your home? When we asked our readers this question, the majority (75%) said that they’d wa...
Robot jurisprudence: How to judge a ’botm | The Economist
Hallie Siegel
29 Sep 2014
The concern for policymakers is creating a regulatory and legal environment that is broad enough to maintain legal and ethical norms but is not so proscriptive as to hamper innovation. It was with thi...
Commercial drone regulations: Canada vs. US
Diana Marina Cooper
29 Sep 2014
When Canadians attempt to characterize aspects of Canadian culture, it’s not uncommon to draw comparisons with the US. I recently noticed that as I respond to questions about the Canadian regulation...
Snapshot of US UAV situation
Andra Keay
25 Sep 2014
The impact on businesses of the ongoing US ban on commercial UAV operation can be seen in a snapshot of this week’s drone news. Drones are very affordable these days, and there is nothing to stop an...
A call for debate on robot policy
Andra Keay
24 Sep 2014
The 1953 New Yorker cartoon that started the “Take me to your leader” meme showed two aliens newly arrived on earth asking a donkey to, effectively, give them policy guidance. This is exactly what...
Hot topic: Regulating robotics
Hallie Siegel
23 Sep 2014
Updated 24/09/14 Do robots need to be regulated? Several legal and policy experts think that robot regulations should be developed early and revised often. Others - especially those working on researc...
We need to pass legislation on artificial intelligence early and often | Slate
Hallie Siegel
23 Sep 2014
Economists and historians traditionally claim that the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution led to the creation of a large middle class in the United States. That’s only partly true. ...
Problems with precautionary principle-minded tech regulation & a Federal Robotics Commission
Hallie Siegel
23 Sep 2014
If there are two general principles that unify my recent work on technology policy and innovation issues, they would be as follows. To the maximum extent possible:
We should avoid preemptive and...
RoboLaw: EU roadmap for developing guidelines on regulating robotics
Hallie Siegel
23 Sep 2014
The investigation on the interplay between robotics and regulation moves from a request for a legal framework that can accompany the developments of robotics. The request is coming from the very actor...
Women in engineering at IROS 2014
Andra Keay
16 Sep 2014
[tweetquote]Shame that the missing engineering hero on the cover of IEEE Spectrum's July issue looks like superMAN[/tweetquote], because the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) lunch at IROS 2014 was a su...
Impact of robocars perceived as net positive even if jobs are displaced
Open Roboethics Initiative
15 Sep 2014
Will robots take away our jobs? Will we be better off with robots even if they do?
One Forbes article published last year by Chunka Mui focused the jobs issue on autonomous cars. In the article tit...
What does the second machine age mean for our jobs? | Erik Brynjolfsson via World Economic Forum Blog
Hallie Siegel
08 Sep 2014
http://youtu.be/7UmGl-FDJ3s
If the first industrial revolution was about creating more effective power systems, such as the steam engine, then this time around the focus is on mental tasks, says Prof...
Reader poll: Will autonomous cars create more jobs than they displace?
Open Roboethics Initiative
03 Sep 2014
One of the most popular questions when it comes to discussing robotics is the jobs question. Will robots create more jobs, or replace them? Recently, we’ve seen a lot of discussions on the topic o...
Readers support cars that communicate and self-organize
Open Roboethics Initiative
01 Sep 2014
The conventional cars that we drive today don’t really talk to one another. Sure, some of them connect to your cellphones and mp3 players. But they don’t form a communication network with neighbou...
CSAIL study finds that human subjects prefer when robots give the orders | MIT News
Hallie Siegel
28 Aug 2014
http://youtu.be/GJ0Pmk_UDY4
New research coming out of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) suggests that letting robots have control over human tasks in manufac...
Finally somebody debunks the Pew Research Center’s “AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs” report
Frank Tobe
25 Aug 2014
Kudos to Erik Sofge, Boston-based reporter for Popular Science Magazine. His recent story, "Sex Bots, Robo-Maids, and other Sci-Fi Myths of the Coming Robot Economy," cleverly pokes holes wh...
Does the Small UAV industry need its own coalition?
Hallie Siegel
22 Aug 2014
Last week USA Today reported that Amazon, 3D Robotics, Parrot and DJI had banded together to form a "Small UAV Coalition", hiring DC-based lobbying firm Akin Gump to represent their interests...
Video: The future of robotics, as seen by roboticists
Robohub Editors
22 Aug 2014
At Automatica 2014 in Munich this year, the ECHORD++ project asked roboticists like Vijay Kumar, Uwe Haass, Pere Homs, and Christian Schlegel one simple question: “What do you think is the future of...
Clearpath’s public stance on Killer Robots sets precedence in corporate responsibility
AJung Moon
20 Aug 2014
Last week the Waterloo-based Clearpath publicly pledged not to develop lethal autonomous weapons, otherwise known as "killer robots". In an open letter to the public, Clearpath's CTO Ryan Gariepy wr...
Reader poll: How do you feel about “Swarms of Autonomous Cars”?
Open Roboethics Initiative
19 Aug 2014
A few of days ago, WIRED and Robohub covered a story about “Largest Swarm of Robots” and how self-organizing algorithms can be used by robots to form certain shapes. This inspired us to see wha...
Experts have no idea if robots will steal your job | Harvard Business Review
Hallie Siegel
18 Aug 2014
Experts disagree about the future. That might seem unextraordinary, but it’s the conclusion of a new survey on robots from Pew, and it’s more significant than it sounds. For all the talk of “ro...
