Aim and Scope

We are witnessing the transition of robots from labs to publicly accessible spaces where they interact more with a diverse range of people in different contexts. This requires an increased focus on human-robot-interaction, raising inherent ethical and legal issues. The RAM special issue will enable readers to better understand the impact of different assessments and potential measures concerning robot ethics on design and deployment. Gaining insight into current regulations, standards, and initiatives that address ethical and legal issues will benefit both researchers and developers. That is, by considering how these can open new directions in robotics and automation research.

Being able to employ measures to address the implications and issues is vital to making robots more acceptable and trustworthy, and fundamental for responsible research and innovation. The special issue will target covering key aspects through concrete examples from ongoing research projects, and applied work and case studies on legal considerations, development of relevant standards, universal design principles, and more. This will be from an international perspective, with contributors representing the global north and south and with emphasis on gender, cultural and ethnic diversity.

The main objective of the special issue is to raise awareness, prompt debate and share knowledge about ethical, legal and user/social perspectives for robot assistants operating in personal and public environments with humans. Views on challenges that are common and unique, respectively, for robotics technologies compared to other fields are also welcome. We invite interested authors to submit their original and unpublished work to the special issue. The work should not be currently under review elsewhere.