Robotics research is increasingly raising ethical implications related to the emerging interactions between robots and human beings. Roboethics deals with the ethical aspects of the design, development and employment of intelligent machines. It shares many "sensitive areas" with computer ethics, information
ethics and bioethics. Progress in the field of computer science and telecommunications allows us to endow
machines with enough intelligence so that they may act autonomously. Therefore, we can forecast that in
the twenty-first century humanity will coexist with the first alien intelligence we have ever come in
contact with – robots. However; as the application field for robots is widening, and the robot is coming
out of the factory halls, new challenges are seen, and even a change of paradigm is taking shape. Not only
roboticists, but also sociologists, psychologists and philosophers are discussing the potentialities and
the limits of these intelligent machines in relation to human beings.
The goal of this Special Issue is to concentrate specifically on unique aspects of automatic identification of artificial entities (robots, bots, avatars, etc.) and complementary problem of human recognition by such artificial agents. The issue concentrates on all aspects of human/robot recognition, which spans the fields of robotics, as well as biometrics, security, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, cognitive science, virtual reality and many other domains.