The Ethics of Drone Design: How Value-Sensitive Design Can Create Better Technologies

The book presents a holistic approach to the design and use of drones, arguing that this powerful technology requires high levels of ethical analysis and responsibility. It introduces four prototype drones developed using a value-sensitive design approach, with values such as human welfare, privacy, trust, environmental sustainability, and justice at the forefront. The book showcases additional methods used to develop the prototype drones from the fields of engineering, ethics, and art, and concludes with recommendations for drone engineers, companies, lawmakers, and citizens on how to support ethics in drone design.

Format: Hardback
Length: 144 pages
Publication date: 04 August 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

The use of drones is a rapidly growing technology that presents both opportunities and challenges. This book takes a holistic approach to the design and use of drones, arguing that this powerful technology requires high levels of ethical analysis and responsibility. As our moral progress must keep pace with our technological progress, it is essential to consider the impact of drones on human values, power relations between individuals and groups, and the complex network of humans and objects in modern society.

The book begins by introducing four prototype drones designed and built by the author: the healthcare drone, the search and rescue drone, the educational drone, and the spiritual drone. These drones have been developed using a value-sensitive design approach, with values such as human welfare, privacy, trust, environmental sustainability, and justice at the forefront. Ethical analyses and social impacts are taken as design inputs, leading to the creation of better, more responsible drone designs.

To develop these prototype drones, the author has drawn on the fields of engineering, ethics, and art, including ethical frameworks, ethics standards, capability caution, and speculative design. The holistic approach reveals a more subtle and nuanced view of drones than the currently polarized characterization of the good drone or the killer drone.

The book concludes with recommendations for drone engineers, companies, lawmakers, and citizens on how to support ethics in drone design. The Ethics of Drone Design is an essential resource for scholars, advanced students, engineers, and designers interested in the ethics of technology. It provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of the ethical considerations surrounding the design and use of drones, and offers valuable insights into how we can navigate this rapidly evolving field responsibly and ethically.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032445519