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About

Markus Christen is a leading researcher at the intersection of ethics, robotics, and artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on the societal implications of autonomous systems. His work critically examines the ethical and legal dimensions of deploying robotic technologies in sensitive domains, including humanitarian action and security. Christen’s major contributions include pioneering the ethical evaluation of “humanitarian drones,” as detailed in his highly cited 2021 scoping literature review (74 citations), which mapped the emerging ethical landscape of UAVs in aid and development. He is also known for his groundbreaking cross-cultural empirical work on “responsibility gaps,” investigating how people in the US, Japan, and Germany perceive accountability when robots cause harm—a study that has sparked significant discussion in machine ethics. His 2017 evaluation schema for autonomous security robots provides a practical framework for assessing ethical risks in security applications. Through these contributions, Christen has helped shape the global conversation on responsible robotics, bridging theoretical ethics with empirical evidence to guide the design and governance of intelligent systems.