How much harm would a robot cause, if a robot could cause harm? Ok, admittedly that's not as good of a tongue twister as the woodchuck chucking wood, but it's a legitimate question being posed by researchers in Slovenia. In Slovenia, where electronic gadgets smack you. Borut Povše at the University of Ljubljana has been testing the punching ability of an industrial-strength robot, inflicting everything from mild to unbearable pain on six of his colleagues and measuring how much they said it hurt. Povše told New Scientist's Paul Marks that robots need to learn their limits to safely work side by side with humans:
"Even robots designed to Asimov's laws can collide with people. We are trying to make sure that when they do, the collision is not too powerful," Povše says. "We are taking the first steps to defining the limits of the speed and acceleration of robots, and the ideal size and shape of the tools they use, so they can safely interact with humans."
