You know those animatronic robots at Chuck E. Cheese? The ones that “sang” pop songs while kids at birthday parties ate pizza and bounced around on a sugar high?

Well, because of a tax law, a court had to decide whether those robots were actually “performing” those songs in the same way a human would.

And that’s just one of the strange legal cases that robots have been involved in.

Courts have also had to determine whether a robot wearing a blond wig in an advertisement represented Vanna White and whether exploring a shipwreck with a robotic submarine gave salvagers exclusive rights to the treasure inside.

(If you’re wondering what the courts decided, they came to the conclusion that the puppets weren’t performers, the robot in a blond wig did represent Vanna White for publicity purposes, and the treasure belonged to the salvagers)

Now, Chuck E. Cheese puppets probably aren’t the most impactful pieces of technology. But the intersection of robots and our legal system is important. According to Ryan Calo, “we’re seeing more and more applications of robots outside of the theater of war and outside of manufacturing where they’ve been historically. And as these robots get out into the world, they’re going to cause legal problems.”

Calo is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Washington, and the author of “Robots in American Law,” a paper that examines the history of, well, robots in American law. And it’s important to understand that history as robots become an even bigger part of our daily lives.

For example, in the future, we’re going to have to decide who is responsible if a driverless car runs someone over, if a manufacturer is still legally liable if someone downloads new software into their robot, and a host of other thorny questions.

Calo believes we need a new way of looking at robotic issues. And part of that new perspective would be a Federal Robotics Commission. He wants a central repository of expertise, for all the countless robotic issues that we’ll encounter in the future.

And Calo insists it be called the “Federal Robotics Commission,” not something more technical (and perhaps more characteristic of government agencies).

“Imagine that you’re a young engineer and you’re deciding on what to do. Would you rather go work for the Bureau of Cyber-Physical Systems, or would you rather work for the Federal Robotics Commission?”