By MC2 Michael Ehrlich

Dr. Ray Buettner, Director of the Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research (CRUSER), welcomes students, faculty and staff to TechCon 2016 in the Ingersoll Hall plaza, July 12. CRUSER's annual open forum looks to broaden the awareness of robotics and unmanned systems student/faculty research at NPS both on campus and beyond.

One of the first presenters on day one of this year's TechCon, Department of Information Sciences Associate Professor Dr. Don Brutzman, focused his presentation on the ethical use of robotic systems in the maritime environment.

"We are looking at maritime unmanned systems ethics, and we are finding that the path to the ethical use of robots in the ocean has to follow people," he explained.

Brutzman says unmanned systems should be thought of as extensions of the operators, and that the systems are better understood if they are "trained" as opposed to "programmed," since they only carry out missions and perform functions designed by people.

"We have to figure out a way to task our unmanned systems to operate independently, but under enough control so that the fleet knows the system will only do what it is told and not anything else," said Brutzman. "The path seems murky to many people, but having worked with many students, we see that it has become very clear.

"Unmanned systems, if they are to be ethically tasked, have to be team players. They have to be qualified like everyone else is on the boat. If they can't follow orders or stop at the limits of their orders, they have no right being out there."