Abstract
Widespread use of small unmanned aircraft systems is becoming prominent in the US. From structural health monitoring to journalism, small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) are allowing people to gain a view of their surroundings and conduct their jobs in ways like never before. With this come many ethical concerns that must be addressed before the sight of a sUAS flying overhead is a widely acceptable occurrence to a majority of the population. Currently, UAS operations used in civil airspace are governed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 107 rules, but these regulations do not address certain ethical considerations. This paper will use the concept of a value model to quantify these ethical concerns so that they may be encoded into the design of a UAS and evaluation of missions before the missions are conducted. This could prove valuable in addressing the ethical challenges that are faced when implementing unmanned aerial systems (UAS) operations into the airspace, especially when UASs are in airspace in densely populated areas.
Highlights
Civil applications of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are becoming more prevalent across various industries in society [1]
This value model illustrates a simplified method for evaluating operational scenarios using attributes that are measured differently and combining them with metrics
We can see from the examples that even though each factor is measured differently, the metrics allow us to combine all of the factors in the model based on their values
Summary
Civil applications of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are becoming more prevalent across various industries in society [1]. The authors, will focus on ways in which to establish a rigorous mathematical model for the ethical governance of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) civil applications as well as government applications that have to do with the interacting with the civilian population, i.e., surveillance. Literature in machine ethics was utilized to establish a basis for what ethical rules an autonomous agent should follow when conducting any kind of operation. Literature on the term ethical governance gave rise to the topic of this paper in evaluating if a mission is ethically sound before the mission is executed This is different from machine ethics as usually implemented, i.e., during the operation
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