Robotics is rapidly becoming one of the leading fields of science and technology, so that very soon humanity is going to coexist with a totally new class of technological artifacts: robots. It will be an event rich in ethical, social and economic problems. “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.” (Veruggio, 2002)^[1] It is the first time in history that humanity is approaching the challenge to replicate an intelligent and autonomous entity. This compels the scientific community to examine closely the very concept of intelligence — in humans, animals, and of the mechanical — from a cybernetic standpoint.
In fact, complex concepts like autonomy, learning, consciousness, evaluation, free will, decision making, freedom, emotions, and many others shall be analyzed, taking into account that the same concept shall not have, in humans, animals, and machines, the same reality and semantic meaning.
From this standpoint, it can be seen as natural and necessary that robotics drew on several other disciplines, like Logic, Linguistics, Neuroscience, Psychology, Biology, Physiology, Philosophy, Literature, Natural history, Anthropology, Art, Design. Robotics de facto unifies the so-called two cultures, science and humanities. The effort to design Roboethics should take care of this specificity. This means that experts shall view robotics as a whole — in spite of the current early stage which recalls a melting pot — so they can achieve the vision of the robotics’ future.