Like the Internet before it, robotics is a socially and economically transformative technology. Robot Law explores how the increasing sophistication of robots and their widespread deployment into hospitals, public spaces, and battlefields requires rethinking of a wide variety of philosophical and public policy issues, including how this technology interacts with existing legal regimes, and thus may inspire changes in policy and in law. This volume collects the efforts of a diverse group of scholars who each, in their own way, has worked to overcome barriers in order to facilitate necessary and timely discussions of a technology in its infancy. Identifying controversial legal, ethical, and philosophical problems, the authors reveal how issues surrounding robotics and regulation are more complicated than engineers could have anticipated, and just how much definitional and applied work remains to be done. This groundbreaking examination of a brand-new reality will be of interest and of use to a variety of groups as the authors include engineers, ethicists, lawyers, roboticists, philosophers, and serving military. Contributors include: P. Asaro, C. Bassani, E. Calisgan, R. Calo, G. Conti, D.M. Cooper, G. Conti, E.A. Croft, K. Darling, F. Ferreira, A.M. Froomkin, S. Gutiu, W. Hartzog, F.P. Hubbard, C.E.A. Karnow, I. Kerr, D. Larkin, J. Millar, A. Moon, J. Nelson, F. Operto, N.M. Richards, L.A. Shay, W.D. Smart, B.W. Smith, K. Szilagyi, K. Thomasen, H.F.M. Van der Loos, G. Veruggio

During the past decade, rapid developments in information and communications technology have transformed key social, commercial and political realities. Within that same time period, working at something less than internet speed, much of the academic and policy debates arising from these new and emerging technologies have been fragmented. There have been few examples of interdisciplinary dialogue about the potential for anonymity and privacy in a networked society. Lessons from the Identity Trail fills that gap, and examines key questions about anonymity, privacy and identity in an environment that increasingly automates the collection of personal information and uses surveillance to reduce corporate and security risks.
This project has been informed by the results of a multi-million dollar research project that has brought together a distinguished array of philosophers, ethicists, feminists, cognitive scientists, lawyers, cryptographers, engineers, policy analysts, government policy makers and privacy experts. Working collaboratively over a four-year period and participating in an iterative process designed to maximize the potential for interdisciplinary discussion and feedback through a series of workshops and peer review, the authors have integrated crucial public policy themes with the most recent research outcomes.