This research project investigates the legal and regulatory implications of the growing inter-dependence and interactions of tangible and virtual elements in cyber-physical systems for healthcare purposes. Typical examples of such cyber-physical systems are cognitive therapeutic robots, physical rehabilitation robots, assistants, and surgery robots. As these technological developments may raise different types of issues, ranging from the invasion of privacy to autonomy suppression or human-human interaction decrease, there may be a need for (some forms of) regulation. The project will highlight specific problems and challenges in regulating complex and dynamic cyber-physical ecosystems in concrete healthcare applications and will explore potential solutions.

This project is part of the LEaDing Postdocs Fellowship Programme, a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 707404. Part of this fellowship is carried in collaboration with AiTech Center at TU Delft, which is a multidisciplinary research program on awareness, concepts, and design & engineering of autonomous technology under meaningful human control.

The output of this research can be found here.