The European Parliament (EP) are to vote next Wednesday, 15th February on the new EU report on rules and laws regulating the use of robots.

Apex Insight has previously reported on the report, authored by Mady Delvaux who is a Luxembourg member of the S&D group. It looks at the civil use of robots including drones, medical equipment and home robots. The report calls on the European Commission to produce a legislative proposal that deals with new issues such as who should be liable if someone gets hurt by a robot in the community.

On Wednesday 8th February the EP held a press seminar on robots in society that was aattended by ‘robot guests of honour as well as Delvaux.

According to a report on the EP website, most of the questions at the seminar focused on privacy issues, the risk or robots creating more unemployment, robots’ legal rights and the possibility of the technology being misused.

Delvaux told the seminar participants: “We see that technology is developing very fast. Robots are already on the market that is why we are calling on the European Commission for regulation on the topic.”

She said that the use of robots would lead to a shift in the employment market and that support was needed for lifelong learning programmes to ensure people are prepared. “This legislation is to make the life better life for humans, not robots,” she added.

Where this won’t stop the nightmarish world envisaged in the Hollywood Terminator films it should enable robots and humans to live in harmony – at least to begin with… 
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