In this paper, a repetitive control scheme of a 2-DOF robotic manipulator based on the improved cubic B-spline curve is proposed. Firstly, a repetitive controller for robotic manipulator is designed, which is composed of an iterative controller and disturbance observer. Then, an improved B-spline optimization scheme is introduced to divide the task of the robotic manipulator into three intervals. A correction function is added to each interval of cubic spline interpolation. Finally, a variety of cases are (...) designed and simulated by MATLAB. The experimental results show that, compared with the conventional B-spline, the improved B-spline has better performance in tracking accuracy and smoothness of motion trajectory. By changing the mechanism of the manipulator, the cases of different weights and lengths are designed. The experimental results in these cases show that the proposed scheme can be applied to most of the 2-DOF robotic manipulator control systems. (shrink)

This article holds that governmental investments in quantum technologies speak to the imaginable futures of digital sovereignty and digital infrastructures, two major areas of change driven by related technologies like AI and Big Data, among other things, in international law today. Under intense development today for future interpolation into digital systems that they may alter, quantum technologies occupy a sort of liminal position, rooted in existing assemblages of computational technologies while pointing to new horizons for them. The possibilities they (...) raise are neither certain nor determinate, but active investments in them (legal, political and material investments) offer perspective on digital technology-driven influences on an international legal imagination. In contributing to visions of the future that are guiding ambitions for digital sovereignty and digital infrastructures, quantum technologies condition digital technology-driven changes to international law and legal imagination in the present. Privileging observation and description, I adapt and utilize a diffractive method with the aim to discern what emerges out of the interference among the several related things assembled for this article, including material technologies and legal institutions. In conclusion, I observe ambivalent changes to an international legal imagination, changes which promise transformation but appear nonetheless to reproduce current distributions of power and resources. (shrink)

The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) challenges much of our traditional understanding of military ethics. What virtues and what sort of ethics education are needed as we move into an ever more AI-driven military reality? In this article we suggest and discuss key virtues that are needed, including the virtue of prudence and the accompanying virtue of good and proper storytelling. We also reflect on the ideal of “explainable AI,” and philosophize about the role of fear in helping us understand (...) what is actually at stake in a military infused with AI-enabled and AI-driven weapons. (shrink)

Having a sense of dignity is one of the core emotions in human life. Is our dignity, and accordingly also our sense of dignity under threat in elderly care, especially in robotic care? How can robotic care support or challenge human dignity in elderly care? The answer will depend on whether it is robot-based, robot-assisted, or teleoperated care that is at stake. Further, the demands and realizations of human dignity have to be distinguished. The demands to respect humans (...) are based on human dignity and the inalienable high and equal moral standing that everyone has. For human moral agents, these demands take the form of negative and positive duties. For robots, they arguably take the form of corresponding ought-to-be norms. The realizations of dignity consist in variable responses to these demands, by oneself by others, and by society at large. This article examines how robot-based, robot-assisted, and teleoperated care can amount to realizations of dignity. The varieties of robotic care can, in different ways, be responsive to the demands of dignity and recognize humans as vulnerable beings with needs, as autonomous agents, and as rational subjects of experience, emotion, and thought. (shrink)

As Artificial Intelligence technology seems poised for a major take-off and changing societal dynamics are creating a high demand for caregivers for elders, children and those infirmed-robotic caregivers, may well be used much more often. This article examines the ethical concerns raised by the use of AI caregivers and concludes that many of these concerns are avoided when AI caregivers operate as partners rather than substitutes. Furthermore, most of the remaining concerns are minor and are faced by human caregivers (...) as well. Nonetheless, because AI caregivers’ systems are learning systems, an AI caregiver could stray from its initial guidelines. Therefore, subjecting AI caregivers to an AI-based oversight system is proposed to ensure that their actions remain both legal and ethical. (shrink)

This paper analyses the probability of a reading so far neglected by editors in Lactantius Placidus’ late antique commentary on Stat. Theb. 5.16. Next, the article argues that, regardless of the accepted reading, this part of the scholium is likely an interpolation.

We discuss robotic art, emotion in robotic art, and compassion in the philosophy of art. We discuss a particular animated artwork, survivor, the walking chair, symbolising survivors of landmine blasts, learning to use crutches, and maimed emotionally as well as physically. Its control incorporates mutual relations between very rudimentary representations of distinct emotions. This artwork is intended for sensitising viewers to the horror experienced by those who survive, and those who don’t. We can only give a small sample, (...) here, of the reactions of viewers on various occasions when survivor was exhibited. Regardless of how much which pertains to human mental functions the tool embodies or doesn’t, it is the effect on the human perceivers which matters most to us, and enables us to understand something more about human cognition. Arguably this project is instructive in respect of the ethical-social implications of the synthetic method, i.e. the construction of inorganic systems in order to understand autonomous intentional action; in this project, the latter pertains to the humans involved. (shrink)

According to "computationalism" (Newell, 1980; Pylyshyn 1984; Dietrich 1990), mental states are computational states, so if one wishes to build a mind, one is actually looking for the right program to run on a digital computer. A computer program is a semantically interpretable formal symbol system consisting of rules for manipulating symbols on the basis of their shapes, which are arbitrary in relation to what they can be systematically interpreted as meaning. According to computationalism, every physical implementation of the right (...) symbol system will have mental states. (shrink)

The Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety acknowledged understaffing and substandard care in residential aged care and home care services, and recommendations were made that that the Australian Government should promote assistive technology within aged care. Robotic care assistants can provide care and companionship for the elderly—both in their own homes and within health and aged care institutions. Although more research is required into their use, studies indicate benefits, including enabling the elderly to live independently at (...) home, assistance with medication and monitoring of safety. Nevertheless, there are inherent ethical challenges in the use of robots as carers, including loss of privacy, unwarranted restrictions on autonomy, lack of dignity, deception, and the exacerbation of loneliness. Ethics by design can counter these issues in development of robotics and clinical ethics committees have been put forward as a way of dealing with the ethical use of robotic care in healthcare institutions. In this paper I outline the ethical challenges of robotic care assistants and how these may be mediated in their design and use. (shrink)

We report two experimental studies of human perceptions of robotic facial expressions while systematically varying context effects and the cultural background of subjects (n = 93). Except for Fear, East Asian and Western subjects were not significantly different in recognition rates, and, while Westerners were better at judging affect from mouth movement alone, East Asians were not any better at judging affect based on eye/brow movement alone. Moreover, context effects appeared capable of over-riding such cultural differences, most notably for (...) Fear. The results seem to run counter to previous theories of cultural differences in facial expression based on emoticons and eye fixation patterns. We connect this to broader research in cognitive science – suggesting the findings support a dynamical systems view of social cognition as an emergent phenomenon. The results here suggest that, if we can induce appropriate context effects, it may be possible to createculture-neutral modelsof robots and affective interaction. (shrink)

We report two experimental studies of human perceptions of robotic facial expressions while systematically varying context effects and the cultural background of subjects (n = 93). Except for Fear, East Asian and Western subjects were not significantly different in recognition rates, and, while Westerners were better at judging affect from mouth movement alone, East Asians were not any better at judging affect based on eye/brow movement alone. Moreover, context effects appeared capable of over-riding such cultural differences, most notably for (...) Fear. The results seem to run counter to previous theories of cultural differences in facial expression based on emoticons and eye fixation patterns. We connect this to broader research in cognitive science – suggesting the findings support a dynamical systems view of social cognition as an emergent phenomenon. The results here suggest that, if we can induce appropriate context effects, it may be possible to createculture-neutral modelsof robots and affective interaction. (shrink)

This paper addresses ethical challenges posed by a robot acting as both a general type of system and a discrete, particular machine. Using the philosophical distinction between “type” and “token,” we locate type-token ambiguity within a larger field of indefinite robotic identity, which can include networked systems or multiple bodies under a single control system. The paper explores three specific areas where the type-token tension might affect human–robot interaction, including how a robot demonstrates the highly personalized recounting of information, (...) how a robot makes moral appeals and justifies its decisions, and how the possible need for replacement of a particular robot shapes its ongoing role. We also consider how a robot might regard itself as a replaceable token of a general robotic type and take extraordinary actions on that basis. For human–robot interaction robotic type-token identity is not an ontological problem that has a single solution, but a range of possible interactions that responsible design must take into account, given how people stand to gain and lose from the shifting identities social robots will present. (shrink)

This paper presents an adaptive neural tracking control approach for a two-joint robotic manipulator with unknown time-varying delays. In order to work out the effect of unknown time-varying delays on the two-joint robotic manipulator, the appropriate Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals and separation technology are chosen to settle this matter. The neural networks work as an approximator that has the advantage of estimating the unknown function in the system. In this paper, Lyapunov stability analysis can prove that all signals of the (...) closed-loop system are semiglobal uniformly ultimately bounded and the tracking error can converge to a compact neighborhood with respect to zero. The simulation consequences demonstrate the availability of the feedforward control approach. (shrink)

We develop a Gentzen-style proof theory for super-Belnap logics, expanding on an approach initiated by Pynko. We show that just like substructural logics may be understood proof-theoretically as logics which relax the structural rules of classical logic but keep its logical rules as well as the rules of Identity and Cut, super-Belnap logics may be seen as logics which relax Identity and Cut but keep the logical rules as well as the structural rules of classical logic. A generalization of the (...) cut elimination theorem for classical propositional logic is then proved and used to establish interpolation for various super-Belnap logics. In particular, we obtain an alternative syntactic proof of a refinement of the Craig interpolation theorem for classical propositional logic discovered recently by Milne. (shrink)

We prove that the Nisan-Wigderson generators based on computationally hard functions and suitable matrices are hard for propositional proof systems that admit feasible interpolation. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Currently, our official rationality is still of a Cartesian kind; we are still embedded in a mechanistic order that takes it that separate, countable entities (spatial forms), related logically to each other, are the only ‘things’ that matter to us—an order clearly suited to advances in robotics. Unfortunately, it is an order that renders invisible ‘relational things’, non-objective things that exist in time, in the transitions from one state of affairs to another, things that ‘point’ toward possibilities in the future, (...) which mean something to us. I have called such things, hermeneutical–dialogical ‘things’ as they gradually emerge in our back-and-forth, step-by-step relations to the others and otherneses in our surroundings; they consist in the ‘promissory’ things sustaining our trust in each other and in our authorities, in our social organizations and social institutions, and in our culture. Clearly, we need to understand better, not only what robots can, and cannot do, but also the long-term ethical and political implications of inserting robotic activities into our everyday ways of relating ourselves to our surroundings if we are to avoid the dystopian futures envisaged by some. Descartes’ aim of “making ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature,” forgets our larger task of our making ourselves into human beings—of doing together in dialog what we cannot do apart. (shrink)

Surgical innovation promises improvements in healthcare, but it also raises ethical issues including risks of harm to patients, conflicts of interest and increased injustice in access to health care. In this article, we focus on risks of injustice, and use a case study of robotic prostatectomy to identify features of surgical innovation that risk introducing or exacerbating injustices. Interpreting justice as encompassing matters of both efficiency and equity, we first examine questions relating to government decisions about whether to publicly (...) fund access to innovative treatments. Here the case of robotic prostatectomy exemplifies the difficulty of accommodating healthcare priorities such as improving the health of marginalized groups. It also illustrates challenges with estimating the likely long-term costs and benefits of a new intervention, the difficulty of comparing outcomes of an innovative treatment to those of established treatments, and the further complexity associated with patient and surgeon preferences. Once the decision has been made to fund a new procedure, separate issues of justice arise at the level of providing care to individual patients. Here, the case of robotic prostatectomy exemplifies how features of surgical innovation, such as surgeon learning curves and the need for an adequate volume of cases at a treatment centre, can exacerbate injustices associated with treatment cost and the logistics of travelling for treatment. Drawing on our analysis, we conclude by making a number of recommendations for the just introduction of surgical innovations. (shrink)

Can artifacts be agents in the same sense as humans? This paper endorses a pragmatic stance to that issue. The crucial question is whether artifacts can have free will in the same pragmatic sense as we consider humans to have a free will when holding them responsible for their actions. The origin of actions is important. Can an action originate inside an artifact, considering that it is, at least today, programmed by a human? In this paper it is argued that (...) autonomy with respect to norms is crucial for artificial agency. (shrink)

With robots being introduced into caregiving, particularly for older persons, various ethical concerns are raised. Among them is the fear of replacing human caregiving. While ethical concepts like well-being, autonomy, and capabilities are often used to discuss these concerns, this paper brings forth the concept of social dignity to further develop guidelines concerning the use of robots in caregiving. By social dignity, we mean that a person’s perceived dignity changes in response to certain interactions and experiences with other persons. In (...) this paper, we will first present the concept of social dignity, and then identify a niche where robots can be used in caregiving in an ethical manner. Specifically, we will argue that, because some activities of daily living are performed in solitude to maintain dignity, a care recipient will usually prefer robotic assistance instead of human assistance for these activities. Secondly, we will describe how other philosophical concepts, which have been commonly used to judge robotic assistance in caregiving for the elderly so far, such as well-being, autonomy, and capabilities, are less useful in determining whether robotic assistance in caregiving is ethically problematic or not. To conclude, we will argue that social dignity offers an advantage to the other concepts, as it allows to ask the most pressing questions in caregiving. (shrink)

Krishnachandra's re-articulation of Kant's transcendental system challenges Kant's conceptualization of 'apperceptive self' conceived as a logical function which is as well the precondition of all our knowledge claims. In Kant's framework, though this "unity of consciousness" is projected as a principle, which undertakes a foundational role as 'apperceptive I', it is capacitated with merely a logical function. Krishnachandra disagrees with Kant's reduction of function of the "self" to a logical process. This reduction would render knowledge of the "self" to be (...) an inferential knowledge, thus making this derivation analogous to the proofs of the transcendental conditions of understanding and sensibility through the logical process of deductions. Krishnachandra's question is: whether this equation established between logical function of 'apperception' and the "self" will suffice to establish the "certitude" of knowledge claims. This is the first task Krishnachandra addresses in his work, Studies in Kant which is elucidated in the following section of this paper. Further, we will see how Krishnachandra’s exploration into the dynamics of this problem leads him to alternatively foreground the "unity", which is much sought by Kantian scholars, between the theoretical and the practical domains of Reason. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new robotic fish which avoids the complex mechanical structure and reduces the model complexity comparing to the existing bioinspired robotic fish, giving rise to a semibiomimetic robotic fish. The generalized Lagrange equation is adopted to establish the dynamic model of the robotic fish. The controllability of the system is analyzed, upon which a trajectory tracking control algorithm is designed by using the feedback linearization technique. The simulation results show that the dynamic model (...) adopted in this paper can achieve better control performance. (shrink)

The false attribution of autonomy and related concepts to artificial agents that lack the attributed levels of the respective characteristic is problematic in many ways. In this article, we contrast this view with a positive viewpoint that emphasizes the potential role of such false attributions in the context of robotic language acquisition. By adding emotional displays and congruent body behaviors to a child-like humanoid robot’s behavioral repertoire, we were able to bring naïve human tutors to engage in so called (...) intent interpretations. In developmental psychology, intent interpretations can be hypothesized to play a central role in the acquisition of emotion, volition, and similar autonomy-related words. The aforementioned experiments originally targeted the acquisition of linguistic negation. However, participants produced other affect- and motivation-related words with high frequencies too and, as a consequence, these entered the robot’s active vocabulary. We will analyze participants’ non-negative emotional and volitional speech and contrast it with participants’ speech in a non-affective baseline scenario. Implications of these findings for robotic language acquisition in particular and artificial intelligence and robotics more generally will also be discussed. (shrink)

AI and robotic technologies attract much hype, including utopian and dystopian future visions of technologically driven provision in the health and care sectors. Based on 30 interviews with scientists, clinicians and other stakeholders in the UK, Europe, USA, Australia, and New Zealand, this paper interrogates how those engaged in developing and using AI and robotic applications in health and care characterize their future promise, potential and challenges. We explore the ways in which these professionals articulate and navigate a (...) range of high and low expectations, and promissory and cautionary future visions, around AI and robotic technologies. We argue that, through these articulations and navigations, they construct their own perceptions of socially and ethically ‘acceptable futures’ framed by an ‘ethics of expectations.’ This imbues the envisioned futures with a normative character, articulated in relation to the present context. We build on existing work in the sociology of expectations, aiming to contribute towards better understanding of how technoscientific expectations are navigated and managed by professionals. This is particularly timely since the COVID-19 pandemic gave further momentum to these technologies. (shrink)

(2014). Killing without Heart: Limits on Robotic Warfare in an Age of Persistent Conflict. Journal of Military Ethics: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 106-111. doi: 10.1080/15027570.2014.910017.

This paper makes the case for arms control regimes to govern the development and deployment of autonomous weapon systems and long range uninhabited aerial vehicles.

Robotics has been increasingly adopted by religious communities around the world. In late 2015, a prototype of the “robot-monk” Xian’er was inaugurated at the Longquan Monastery in Beijing, with a second-generation model added in 2016 and a third robot released in 2018. Since then, Xian’er has been reciting Buddhist mantras and offering guidance on matters of faith to the thousands of worshippers visiting the temple every year or connecting with it online. In 2017, a robotic arm performing the Hindu (...) Aarti ritual, which involves moving a light in front of a deity following a circular pattern, also appeared. The same year, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Germany’s Protestant Church introduced a “robot-priest” called BlessU-2, able to give blessings in several languages, with a male or female voice. In 2018, roboticist Gabriele Trovato designed SanTO (acronym of “Sanctified Theomorphic Operator”), a small robot drawing inspiration from the statues of saints, in the aim to offer spiritual succour to Catholic believers, keep them company during prayer, and teach catechism. Such innovations are markedly changing the way people experience faith and religious practices, through a process of _dis_- and _re_-embodiment of “officiating agents”, which entails relevant transformations in terms of meaning-making processes, as well as related to the way devotees engage in ethical reasoning and decision-making, and to the normative protocols needed to regulate them. This paper addresses these crucial issues through a semiocultural approach, combining theoretical reflection with the analysis of the above-mentioned case studies. (shrink)

Articulated arm coordinate measuring machine is a specific robotic structural instrument, which uses D-H method for the purpose of kinematic modeling and error compensation. However, it is difficult for the existing error compensation models to describe various factors, which affects the accuracy of AACMM. In this paper, a modeling and error compensation method for AACMM is proposed based on BP Neural Networks. According to the available measurements, the poses of the AACMM are used as the input, and the coordinates (...) of the probe are used as the output of neural network. To avoid tedious training and improve the training efficiency and prediction accuracy, a data acquisition strategy is developed according to the actual measurement behavior in the joint space. A neural network model is proposed and analyzed by using the data generated via Monte-Carlo method in simulations. The structure and parameter settings of neural network are optimized to improve the prediction accuracy and training speed. Experimental studies have been conducted to verify the proposed algorithm with neural network compensation, which shows that 97% error of the AACMM can be eliminated after compensation. These experimental results have revealed the effectiveness of the proposed modeling and compensation method for AACMM. (shrink)

The sole purpose of this paper is to give an algebraic characterization, in terms of a superamalgamation property, of a local version of Craig interpolation theorem that has been introduced and studied in earlier papers. We continue ongoing research in abstract algebraic logic and use the framework developed by Andréka– Németi and Sain.

Let L be a first-order language and Φ and ψ two $\Sigma _{1}^{1}$ L-sentences that cannot be satisfied simultaneously in any finite L-structure. Then obviously the following principle Chain L,Φ,ψ (n,m) holds: For any chain of finite L-structures C 1 ,...,C m with the universe [n] one of the following conditions must fail: 1. $C_{1}\vDash \Phi $ , 2. C i ≅ C i+1 , for i = 1,...,m — 1, 3. $C_{m}\vDash \Psi $ . For each fixed L and (...) parameters n,m the principle Chain L,Φ,ψ (n,m) can be encoded into a propositional DNF formula of size polynomial in n,m. For any language L containing only constants and unary predicates we show that there is a constant c L such that the following holds: If a constant depth Frege system in DeMorgan language proves Chain L,Φ,ψ (n, c L · n) by a size s proof then the class of finite L-structures with universe [n] satisfying Φ can be separated from the class of those L-structures on [n] satisfying ψ by a depth 3 formula of size $2^{{\rm log}(s)^{O(1)}}$ and with bottom fan-in ${\rm log}(s)^{O(1)}$. (shrink)

We report two experimental studies of human perceptions of robotic facial expressions while systematically varying context effects and the cultural background of subjects. Except for Fear, East Asian and Western subjects were not significantly different in recognition rates, and, while Westerners were better at judging affect from mouth movement alone, East Asians were not any better at judging affect based on eye/brow movement alone. Moreover, context effects appeared capable of over-riding such cultural differences, most notably for Fear. The results (...) seem to run counter to previous theories of cultural differences in facial expression based on emoticons and eye fixation patterns. We connect this to broader research in cognitive science – suggesting the findings support a dynamical systems view of social cognition as an emergent phenomenon. The results here suggest that, if we can induce appropriate context effects, it may be possible to createculture-neutral modelsof robots and affective interaction. (shrink)