RoboGuy
10-24-2007, 04:32 PM
Two recent stories show that we've still got a ways to go in makinghuman robot interaction safe and effective. In anarticle titled, "Erraticfleshies sabotage, wreck innocent flying robot", the Registerreports on new air safetyrecommendations for the use of autonomous and remotely-pilotedflying robots in US air space. The recommendations stem from last year'scrashof a Predator B robot, caused by a sequence of events that followed asoftware lock up on the remote control console. While the robot wasdestroyed, nohumans were hurt in the Predator crash. The outcome was not so lucky in amore recentrobotics-related incident in which an Oerlikon GDF-005 roboticanti-aircraft cannon "malfunctioned", killing 9 people and wounding14. It's believe the incident was caused by either a mechanical orsoftware problem. Interestingly, this weapon is a simple automatedmachine operatedunder the control of a human and not a fully autonomous weapon like the SamsungTechwin SGR-A1, which autonomously makes it's own decisions aboutwho to kill. So at least theethical and legal ramifications of the accident should be no differentthan those of a conventional industrial or military accident.
More... (http://robots.net/article/2381.html)
More... (http://robots.net/article/2381.html)