Table 5.

ERA for the deployment of a floating swarm to detect water pollutants.

category	ethical risk	level	mitigation
societal	loss of trust in the readout	M	the system will need to be thoroughly tested, verified and validated for false negative and false positive pollutant readouts which would undermine trust in the system.
societal	ownership and control of the robots is not clear	M	each robot should have a QR code with additional information.
environmental	swarm deployments are not sustainable	M	swarms should be made environmentally friendly by design (e.g. biodegradable, easy to collect, safe for wildlife and collision-benign). Aggregation of robots should be avoided to prevent robot-bergs.