Robotic Ethics

This whitepaper articulates a genealogy and an operational framework for contemporary robotic ethics. It starts from Asimov's Three Laws (1942) as anticipatory fiction, traces contemporary developments (IEEE, UN, EU frameworks) and analyses four families of critical dilemmas: autonomous cars (variants of the trolley problem), surgical robots (delegation of clinical decision), military robots (lethal autonomous weapons systems) and care robots (substitution and dependence). Asimov, Bostrom, Floridi and Russell are cited. A position from Latin America is proposed with six operational principles for regulators, engineers and users of the region. The thesis: robotic ethics is not academic ornament — it is the only way robotics can advance without destroying what it claims to serve.