Chairs Pierre Delvenne, Jan Romportl, Lenka Hebáková
Day and time Thursday, March 14th, 2013; 16:30 – 18:00
Jan Romportl (University of West Bohemia) and Lenka Hebakova (Technology Centre ASCR) - chairs of the session

Jan Romportl (University of West Bohemia) and Lenka Hebakova (Technology Centre ASCR) – chairs of the session

The event was co-financed by the project “Interdisciplinary Partnership for Artificial Intelligence”(MOAINet). 

It was a round table session, which offered students, (post)graduates, researchers and practitioners from different disciplines and spheres the opportunity to discuss how they can learn from Technology Assessment activities and from each other.  The roundtable panelists spoke from their own background and answered questions from the audience or challenge the audience to reflect on the approaches and visions that Technology Assessment uses.

Science, technology and society co-evolve at an increased speed. Activities that provide knowledge-based support for innovation governance and policy-design have to adapt to globalised economy, risk-aversive society, and information-overloaded policy-makers etcetera.  Technology Assessment of today is not and should not be Technology Assessment from 1980s or 1990s. Rather, it needs as much input from TA like activities as possible: foresights studies, science communication, ethical-legal-societal implication studies, risk assessment, transition management, science & technology studies, etc. All deliver disciplinary expertise but often lack time and means to share results and visions or to collaborate across disciplinary boundaries.

The topic chosen for the round table discussion was robotics for society. This topic has significant techno-scientific challenges and societal expectations and concerns.  The audience was students, doctoral and postdoctoral researchers that  phrased reflections, questions or suggestions based on:

  • the interests/background of the addressee (somebody from government, industry, academia, TA community)
  • their own field of education/expertise (foresights studies, science communication, ethical-legal-societal  implication studies, risk assessment, transition management, science & technology studies,…)

The background document for this session is available here.

The abstracts of the session can be read here.

Presentations of the session:

  • J. Romportl (New Technologies – Research centre, University of West Bohemia, Pilsen)

Robotics for Society: Introduction       

  • F. Lucivero (Tilburg Institute for Law Technology and society (TILT), University of Tilburg)

RoboLaw. Regulating emerging technologies in Europe: Robotics facing law and ethics

  • MdN. Ruffo (Université Paris-Sorbonne, France; Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix, Namur, Belgium)

Why autonomous UAVs will lose the war


Panel of discussing experts


TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT

Pierre Delvenne – SPIRAL, University of Liège, Belgium

Michiel van Oudheusden – SPIRAL, University of Liège, Belgium

Federica Lucivero – Tilburg Institute for Law Technology and society (TILT), University of Tilburg, Netherlands


ROBOTICS

Jan Romportl – New Technologies – Research centre, University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic

Marie-des-Neiges Ruffo – Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), Paris, France and FUNDP (Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix), Namur, Belgique

Ivan M. Havel – Center for Theoretical Studies, Prague, Czech Republic

Karel Roubík – Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic

Olga Štěpánková – Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic

Ivan Dvořák – Innovation Leadership Agency, Prague, Czech Republic