It deals with legal and philosophical issues of giving robots lethal powers over humans, echoing the "Terminator" movies and countless other science fiction novels and films.
The report for the UN Human Rights Commission calls for a worldwide moratorium on testing, production, assembly, transfer, acquisition, deployment and use of killer robots.
Report author Christof Heyns, a UN human rights lawyer, calls them "Lethal autonomous robotics" and says: "Decisions over life and death in armed conflict may require compassion and intuition. Humans - while they are fallible - at least might possess these qualities, whereas robots definitely do not.