Recently, I analyzed some bibliometric data to demonstrate the emergence of robot ethics as a field. The data and the full blog post can be found at:

http://bitsofbats.weebly.com/blog/robot-ethics-as-an-emerging-field-some-data

The data presented in the blog post, provide some evidence that the field of robot ethics is on the rise, both in academia and beyond. In all, the data add to the intuition that the ethical aspects of robotics is becoming more of an issue. For example, the 1st International Workshop on AI and Ethics was held in 2015. Also, influential news sites around the net (including Nature News: here and here) are picking up on stories related to robot ethics. Finally, various initiatives to regulate the ethics of robotics have emerged. This increased attention for ethical issues seems to be reflected in the publication record. With robots able to fire without human intervention becoming a (scary) reality (see video in the original post), the interest in robot ethics might not have come too soon.