Europe regulates robotics: Summer school brings together researchers and experts in robotics

After a successful 2016 first edition, our next summer school cohort on The Regulation of Robotics in Europe: Legal, Ethical and Economic Implications will take place in Pisa at the Scuola Sant'Anna, from 3- 8 July. When the Robolaw project came to an end – and we presented our results before the European Parliament – we clearly perceived that a leap was needed not only in some approaches to regulation but also in the way social scientists, as well as engineers, are trained. Indeed, in order to undergo technical analysis in law and robotics, without being lured into science fiction, an adequate understanding of the peculiarities of the systems being studied is required. A bottom-up approach, like the one adopted by Robolaw and its guidelines, is essential. Social scientists, and lawyers in particular, often lack such knowledge and thus tend to either make unreasonable assumptions – of technological developments that are farfetched or simply unrealistic – or misperceive what the pivoting point in the analysis is going to be.