Toward the Human-Robot CoExistence Society: On Safety Intelligence for Next Generation Robots

Abstract Technocrats from many developed countries, es-pecially Japan and South Korea, are preparing for the human–robot co-existence society that they believe will emerge by 2030. Regulators are assuming that within the next two decades, robots will be capable of adapting to complex, unstructured environments and interacting with humans to assist with the performance of daily life tasks. Unlike heavily regulated industrial robots that toil in iso-lated settings, Next Generation Robots will have relative autonomy, which raises a number of safety issues that are the focus of this article. Our purpose is to describe a frame-work for a legal system focused on Next Generation Robots safety issues, including a Safety Intelligence concept that addresses robot Open-Texture Risk. We express doubt that a model based on Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics can ever be a suitable foundation for creating an artificial moral agency ensuring robot safety. Finally, we make predictions about the most significant Next Generation Robots safety is-sues that will arise as the human–robot co-existence society emerges