Abstract
Imbuing a robot with decisional autonomy raises many technical issues that must be dealt with in order to let the robots out of the labs. In the framework of a shared authority between the robot itself and a human being, what is at stake is to mitigate the weaknesses of both agents (i.e., the robot and the human) through appropriate control handovers. This chapter focuses on autonomy technical issues, on some human weak spots when interacting with a robot, and on the human-robot interaction issues. Moreover a section focuses on some ethical challenges that are raised by autonomy. The conclusion shows that many questions have to be answered through research and technical work so as to make sure that robots and autonomous machines will be beneficial for society.
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Ricoeur (1990) defines ethics as compared to morality in so far as morality states what is compulsory or prohibited whereas ethics assesses what is fair and what is not in a given situation.
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Acknowledgements
This chapter is an updated translation of: Tessier C (2015) Autonomie: enjeux techniques et perspectives. Drones et killer robots: faut-il les interdire? Doaré R, Danet D, de Boisboissel G editors. Presses Universitaires de Rennes. In French.
The last part on Autonomy and authority sharing ethical challenges is an updated translation of the corresponding part in: Tessier C (2016) Conception et usage des robots: quelques questions éthiques. Techniques de l’Ingénieur S7900 V1. In French.
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Tessier, C. (2017). Robots Autonomy: Some Technical Issues. In: Lawless, W., Mittu, R., Sofge, D., Russell, S. (eds) Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence: A Threat or Savior?. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59719-5_8
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