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WeRobot is the premiere international conference on law and policy relating to Robotics. The conference began at Miami Law in 2012, and it returns to Miami roughly every second year, generally alternating between east and west coasts. Recent successful bids for the conference include Yale and Stanford University.
Robots

WeRobot Heads North!

Important Message

Dear We Robot Community,
Due to COVID-19 and these extraordinary times, We Robot was not held in person for 2020. As our conference participants were adapting to the world’s continuing changes, We Robot was adapting too, and was held virtually on September 22-25, 2020.
We hope you took part in our virtual activities, and we look forward to seeing you again in the future.
The We Robot 2020 Organizing Committee
See 2020 program

On April 2-4, 2020, the east coast edition was heading north to Canada, and was to be hosted by the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at the University of Ottawa. Due to COVID-19 and these extraordinary times, We Robot was postponed and was not held in person for 2020, but virtually on September 22-25, 2020.

Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are transformative technologies and our goal is to anticipate and plan for that transformation. WeRobot speakers included an interdisciplinary mix of scholars, policy-makers, regulators, and entrepreneurs who discussed the latest issues relating to robots and AI in the home, in hospitals, in public places and battlespaces. In each of these domains robots and AI disrupt existing legal regimes or require a rethinking of difficult policy issues.

WeRobot attendees include lawyers, policy makers, engineers, social scientists, philosophers, roboticists, ethicists, and regulators who are on the front lines of robot and AI theory, design, or development. They meet for exciting interdisciplinary conversations and debates that feature designers, developers, and those who deploy robots and AI, as well as the people who are influencing the legal and social structures in which they operate. WeRobot 2020 was to involve around 200 attendees and participants.

The 2020 Virtual Edition

As our conference participants were adapting to the world’s continuing changes, We Robot was adapting too, and the 2020 edition was held virtually on September 22-25, 2020.

We received a fantastic slate of paper and poster submissions and we remained committed to providing the authors of the submissions with the highest quality feedback, as is quintessential of We Robot conferences. To this end, we decided to deliver the conference asynchronously online, using pre-recorded author/discussant sessions.

Over the summer of 2020, we worked with authors and discussants to record virtual We Robot paper sessions and panels. Thanks to the hard work of our conference community, we were able to offer a taste of the spirited We Robot discussions that we all love. In the We Robot tradition, the videos, most of which were 30 minutes long, featured a discussant presenting, discussing and offering constructive thoughts and improvements on the author’s work, after which the author had time to respond to the discussant’s feedback. 

Conference participants were able to comment and exchange thoughts and ideas in the comments section of the video. We welcomed constructive comments through the platforms of YouTube (where the videos were hosted) and Twitter (where the videos were shared with a broader audience).

The virtual conference consisted of the following online events:

  • A live virtual Kick-Off Event occurred on September 22nd at 5:00 pm EST.
  • Virtual Paper discussions: Each recorded discussion was made available on the We Robot website and shared on Twitter with a unique hashtag. Community members were encouraged to join the conversation. 
  • A live virtual Closing Event occurred on Friday, September 25th at 5:00 pm EST to announce the winners of the paper and poster awards (including the Ian R. Kerr Robotnik Memorial Award for an Emerging Scholar) along with plans for We Robot 2021 (the 10-year anniversary of We Robot!).

See the full program

Connection details were automatically sent to people who had registered for We Robot 2020 in April. Interested participants were added to the list by sending an email to [email protected]. Registration was free.

Past Conferences

Contact

For general inquiries, please contact: [email protected]

For press inquiries and media credentialing, please contact:
Isabelle Mailloux Pulkinghorn, Manager, Media Relations, uOttawa at [email protected]

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Presented by Microsoft
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Sponsored by CIFAR
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uOttawa logo, with the name of the Office of the Vice President, Research, Faculty of Law, Common Law Section and Faculty of Engineering
Tech Policy Lab, University of Washington
Miami Law, University of Miami, School of Law
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