Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Robot sentinella

Samsung has partnered with Korea university and developed the machine-gun equipped robotic sentry. It is equipped with two cameras with zooming capabilities one for day time and one for infrared night vision. It has a sophisticated pattern recognition which can detect the difference between humans and trees, and a 5.5mm machine-gun. The robot also has a speaker to warn the intruder to surrender or get a perfect headshot. The robots will go on sale by 2007 for $ 200,000 and will be deployed on the border between North and South Korea.

This news reminds me of the rules of robotics which are set by Isaac Asimov Even do Asimov was a writer of SF books the things he wrote about ethics for robots are accepted by the majority of the scientific community building robots.

- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

- A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The US army also already has some armed robots and this also is considered against moral standards by a large number of leading researchers. As already stated Asimov was a novel writer however the things he wrote on this subject are a good and clear guideline, which should be respected by researchers and companies in my opinion.


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