IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2021 - 157

Committee on Roboethics was created by the RAS in 2004;
it was defined in this way:
Roboethics is an applied ethics whose objective is to
develop scientific/cultural/technical tools that can be
shared by different social groups and beliefs. These
tools aim to promote and encourage the development
of robotics for the advancement of human
society and individuals, and to help preventing its
misuse against humankind.
Roboethics was classified in the following three levels:
1) Roboethics: intrinsically referred to as philosophical
issues, humanities, and social sciences
2) Robot ethics: referring to science and technology
3) Robot's ethics: concerning mainly science fiction.
The European Commission then funded collaborative
projects on this topic involving roboticists and social scientists,
such as Emerging Technoethics of Human Interaction
with Communication, Bionic and Robotic Systems
(ETHICBOTS), while an important outcome in Japan
was the Fukuoka World Robot Declaration [52]. Several
workshops on this theme have also been organized at
major robotics conferences, including ICRA in 2005,
2007, and 2009, and the IEEE RAS/EMBS International
Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics
in 2006).
Robots as possible coworkers helping humans in boring
and/or heavy work were analyzed during the 2014
edition of the Italy-Japan workshop, " Robot Coworker-
Towards a Society Supported By Robot Coworkers. " At
this event, several examples of applications were discussed,
including agricultural, manufacturing, underwater,
and aerial. The coworker idea was also analyzed from
the viewpoint of legislative and social implications. DustCart,
developed by Sant'Anna within the DustBot project
and displayed in Tokyo and Osaka during the 2009 Italy-
Japan workshop edition (see Figure 5), was an example of
a service robot [53] that had to face the legislative issue of
dealing with traffic rules. The European Union faced legislation
issues concerning robotics through the Seventh
Framework Programme (FP7) project RoboLaw, led by
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Italy [54], which was completed
in the same year. Such a project was followed up
on in Japan, where ROBOLAW.ASIA was born at Tohoku
University. This research field installed the guidelines on
ethically aligned design, such as the publication by Weng
et al. [55] and the IEEE standards released in 2018 [56].
One year later, this theme was addressed again, together
with its implications at-large in our modern society and
economy, with the 2015 workshop " Can Robots Save the
World Economy? " Here, several talks highlighted that the
opportunities presented by the rise of robotics may overcome
the risks of unemployment. This issue was debated
from the viewpoint of both economics and technology,
highlighting the challenges and proposing possible solutions
for a problem that is still unsolved today. To the
threats of job replacement, opportunities also exist as new
jobs can be created: The most concrete contribution to this
commitment is the realization of start-ups. During the
event, the representatives of start-ups born from robot
technologies that originated from the Sant'Anna and
Waseda universities were invited to present their work and
compare their approach. An emblematic example of successful
development is
Engineering-Based Medicine
(EBM) Corporation,
which specializes in robotic
technology for cardiac
surgery training.
Robotics for Sports
Miniaturized wearable technologies
and robotic tools
are increasingly populating
the field of sports science.
Microelectromechanical
Beyond the first
bioinspired soft robots,
like the octopus-inspired
arm developed at Scuola
Superiore Sant'Anna, soft
robotics now constitutes
an extremely productive
research field worldwide.
systems (MEMS) are widespread
and can finely measure
several physical and
biophysical parameters of
athletes, unobtrusively, in
most cases. Italy has a long
tradition, and the top industries (e.g., STMicroelectronics) for
MEMS fabrication, consequently, are also very active in
athletes' measurements for assessing and optimizing performance
[57], [58]. Japan is also very active in sports science,
where robotic platforms have played an important
role as emulators/trainers for specific sport gestures [59],
[60]. At the industrial level, in Italy, Technogym is at the
forefront of this challenge.
Prior to the 2019 Rugby World Cup and the 2020 Tokyo
Olympic Games (postponed to 2021), the field of sport science
was gaining increasing exposure in Japan. As such,
the 2017 edition of the Italy-Japan workshop, " Robotics
Figure 5. The DustCart service robot (right) displayed at the
Italy-Japan workshop in 2009 together with the Tmsuk RODEM
mobility platform.
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IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2021

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