Dear Colleagues,

Roboethics (Robot Ethics) is a branch of applied ethics and technoethics (technology ethics) of great value for modern human society. It studies the ethical problems that arise with the design, operation, control, and use of mental (intelligent, cognitive, autonomous) robots in real life. These problems have to be faced by scientists/engineers, operators/programmers, and end users in their own consequences. Overall, roboethics investigates how moral and ethical principles and theories can be (and must be) employed to resolve the complicated and crucial ethical issues/dilemmas encountered in practice when autonomous or semiautonomous robots are put at work. At the philosophical and theoretical level roboethics informs ethics via the development of potentially new ethical theories emergent from the field of robotics.

The aim of this Special Issue is to publish high-quality research papers of both theoretical and practical nature. Particular areas to be considered include, but are not limited to, the following:

Theoretical roboethics issues.
Effects of robotics on society.
Robot design ethics.
Robot use ethics.
Ethics of health care robots.
Ethics of robotic surgery.
Autonomous cars’ ethics.
Ethics of assistive robots.
Ethics of social robots.
Ethics of war robots.
Security and privacy robot ethics.
Robot rights.
Deliberate abuse of robots.
Robot economy ethics.
Philosophical aspects of roboethics.
Other roboethics issues.

Guest Editor:
Prof. Spyros G. Tzafestas
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece