25 1 INTRODUCTION but that these may differ based on culture and context. A response to counter this would be to take an empirical basis for one’s viewpoint instead of a philosophical one, or acknowledge that the researcher’s position is not the only valid position to be considered (Borning & Muller, 2012). Borning and Muller (2012) pose a pluralistic position in that the VSD should not recommend either a universal or a relative view on values, but it should leave engineers free to decide which view is most appropriate in context of their design. Also, while moral values can and do differ across cultures, some values guiding basic principles of international law – e.g. human rights and protection of civilians- have been formally endorsed by countries with different histories and cultures (ICRC, 2010). In line with Borning and Muller (2012) we used the VSD approach in our research as guidance and not as a goal in itself. In the conceptual phase, we slightly deviate from the original VSD method, because we do not conduct a full stakeholder analysis to identify the stakeholders in the conceptual investigation phase, but we focus on the obvious stakeholder groups; military, policymakers, industry and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO’s). For the identification of values in step 2, we used our previous work (Verdiesen, Santoni de Sio, & Dignum, 2019) in which we researched the values related to Autonomous Weapon Systems. In the technical investigation phase, we do not design an Autonomous Weapon System as one intuitively might expect, because this would be an immense project well beyond the scope of this research. Yet, we used a discrete-event modelling language (Coloured Petrinets (CPNs)) for modelling synchronisation concurrency and communication processes. We created a model that represents observable criteria of a pre-flight mission planning and post-flight mission evaluation process for autonomous drones. Figure 1: VSD (as in: Umbrello & Van de Poel, 2021)
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