Roboethics

Robotics is a very fast growing field especially in the last years. Begin of the 90's a new generation of mobile, intelligent, cooperative robots grows up. This new generation opens new applications areas like in the household, for medical and rehabilitation applications, in the entertainment industry as well as for leisure and hobby. Current developing trends are humanoid robots and robots supporting the human in everyday life. Other intensive research areas are cooperative robots, bio inspired robots, ubiquitous robots and cloud robots. Robotics is a new science as well as a branch or a field of application of Engineering. Some decades ago social aspects of robotics were discussed. Because of the results and the rapid development of this field ethical issues became more and more important. Therefore the term Roboethics was introduced in the literature. In this contribution a first overview from a practical viewpoint will be given.