Robots and the law

All of these issues will become relevant over the next few decades, as robotics penetrates further into ordinary life. The safety and liability issues aren't insurmountable though, and after some initial period of experimentation during which there could be accidents (as there have been with robots in factories) eventually protocols and best practices will emerge, likely accompanied by some legal guidelines. There are a few obvious things which could feature as part of a future robotics directive, such as.

• Robots should be fitted with some standardised failure detection electronics. Some specification should categorise failure modes, together with an indication of their severity in terms of risks to users. The failure detection system would monitor things like speed, acceleration, motor stalls, attitude and battery power.
  

• If a serious failure occurs, such as battery failure, the robot should default to a safe posture. This would just be an elaboration on existing industrial robot directives, which say that if emergency stop is activated the system should come to a controlled stop, then power down.

• If the robot is connected to the internet, and I expect that most will be, there should be some standardised protocol used for teleoperation. A standardised interface can be rigorously tested for security flaws, to minimise the risk of unauthorised access.

• A specified amount of data about the robots operations should always be logged in some recognised format. This would act like a black box recorder in the event of an accident, allowing a technician to try to recreate the problem in simulation. Courts may require this data to be provided as evidence in legal cases.
  

• There are already industry recognised quality markings indicating that systems have been certified to a given safety standard. Some comparable marking should exist for robotics. There may need to be different certifications for different kinds of application.

If the robot causes an accident, and it's subsequently discovered that it doesn't comply with something resembling the above guidelines, then you can go ahead and sue the company that manufactured it for negligence. If the robot was in compliance, and the accident wasn't just some random "act of god" which couldn't have been foreseen, then there should be some legal responsibility on the company to identify the fault and take reasonable precautions to prevent it happening on future systems, and perhaps pay compensation if necessary.