Good robot design needs to be reponsible, not just responsive

Robots have become commonplace in many aspects of life including health care, military and security work. Yet until recently little thought has been given outside of academic circles to the ethics of robots. Silicon Valley Robotics recently launched a Good Robot Design Council -- which has launched "5 Laws of Robotics" guidelines for roboticists and academics -- on the ethical creation, marketing and use of robots in everyday life. The laws have been adapted from the EPSRC 2010 "Principles of Robotics". In Britain a few months ago we saw a similar document, "BS8611 Robots and robotic devices" by the British Standards Institute (BSI) presented at the Social Robotics and AI conference in Oxford as an approach to embedding ethical risk assessment in robots.