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As service robots become increasingly common in society, so too will accidents involving service robots. Current law functions effectively to adjudicate the disputes that arise from such accidents, but as technology improves and robot autonomy grows, it will become much harder to apply currently existing laws. Instead, new legal frameworks will have to be developed to address questions of liability in human-robot interaction. We have already proposed the framework 'Robots as Animals', in which robots are analogized to domesticated animals for legal purposes in disputes about liability. In our initial presentation, though, we focused exclusively on the common law in the US Federal Government. In this paper, we examine the laws concerning domesticated animals in countries in Europe, Asia and North America. We apply the lessons learned from our analysis to build an expanded framework that better reflects the established norms of several nations, and more explicitly balances the competing interests of producers and consumers of robot technology. We also provide examples of ways in which our new framework may be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telerobotically operated and semiautonomous machines have become a major component in the arsenals of industrial nations around the world. By the year 2015 the United States military plans to have one-third of their combat aircraft and ground vehicles robotically controlled. Although there are many reasons for the use of robots on the battlefield, perhaps one of the most interesting assertions are that these machines, if properly designed and used, will result in a more just and ethical implementation of warfare. This paper will focus on these claims by looking at what has been discovered about the capability of humans to behave ethically on the battlefield, and then comparing those findings with the claims made by robotics researchers that their machines are able to behave more ethically on the battlefield than human soldiers. Throughout the paper we will explore the philosophical critique of this claim and also look at how the robots of today are impacting our ability to fight wars in a just manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]