Every day, another story hits the wire detailing some newfound robotic ability. Today, scientists at Brown University happily reported that they trained a robot to obey nonverbal commands in environments previously thought to be difficult for our exceedingly competent robotic friends.

Whether they’re tending our tomatoes, as a bunch of MIT students turned farmers programmed them to do, zooming around your floor and picking up idle crumbs — yes, I really want a Roomba! — or patrolling borders in South Korea or Israel, robots are developing freakishly fast. And that scares philosopher A.C. Grayling, who’s calling for robot regulation in New Scientist.

Grayling isn’t stressing so much about the domestically inclined robots so much as the surveillance, military or police robots. He’s arguing for regulation that covers all robotic devices before it’s too late. Maybe, as my fellow science blogger Robert pointed out, he recently rented “Runaway” or “The Terminator?” Whatever the reason for the robot rhetoric, not everyone agrees with Grayling. As many have pointed out, robots are remotely controlled by someone, who therefore bears the responsibility if they go awry.

I keep thinking about the singularity, but that’s a whole other post. What do you guys think? Do we need to employ Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics in order to avoid a real-life Butlerian Jihad? School me and other robotics novices on why this is or isn’t an issue.

In the meantime, you can always do some more robot reading at HowStuffWorks.com
How Police Robots Work
How Robot Armies Will Work
How Robotic Vacuums Work
What’s the technological singularity?