America Needs a Federal Robotics Agency

Author(s): 
Publication Type: 
White Paper / Report
Publication Date: 
September 22, 2014

Ryan Calo is an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law. A host of emerging technologies require a coordinated set of laws and regulations as society adapts

This piece originally appeared on Brookings.

The U.S. Department of Transportation had a problem: Toyota customers were alleging that their vehicle had accelerated unexpectedly, causing death or injury. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found some mechanical problems that may have accounted for the accidents—specifically, a design flaw that enabled accelerator pedals to become trapped by floor mats—but other experts suspected a software issue was to blame. Like most contemporary vehicles, Toyotas rely on computers to control many elements of the car. Congress was worried enough at the prospect of glitches in millions of vehicles that it directed the DOT to look for electronic causes.

NHTSA lacked the expertise to disentangle the complex set of interactions between software and hardware “under the hood.” The agency struggled over what to do until it hit upon an idea: let’s ask NASA. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration builds semi-autonomous systems and sends them to other planets; it has deep expertise in complex software and hardware. Indeed, NASA was able to clear Toyota’s software in a February 2011 report. “We enlisted the best and brightest engineers to study Toyota’s electronics systems,” proudly stated U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, “and the verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas.”

Read the full piece at Time Magazine