Drones - Ethical and Legal Issues in Civil and Military Research as a Future Opportunity

Abstract

Civil and military research is characterized by common rules in some issues because both have as main purpose the innovation and creativity goals. But, also each of them has their own regulations and particularities given by their special and unique field of action, civil and military. Step by step, drones gained their place in the actual research area and we need to know and explore all the actual legal regulations existing at European level and global one. We should not ignore the fact that drones have many positive advantages and disadvantages; and, we need to take into consideration all the ethical issues that can occur in different stages of research. A clear and coherent image of the ethical and legal issues that appear in actual civil and military research for drones is representative for our field of study. Also a future representation for their usage is significant and must be brought into discussion. We presented in this paper the case studies of European Union and United States of America who already have adopted legal and ethical regulations regarding the usage of civil drones or so named `Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems`. We will also have in our attention the comparison of current ethical and legal regulations from the European Union and United States of America and also the differences between civil and military drones and their existing particularities. At the end of our paper we include future possible usage of drones in the near future respecting the ethical issue that those include and we did not take into consideration.