An international coalition of disarmament and human rights groups has said that UN-sponsored talks in Geneva this week must seize the opportunity to ban the development of fully autonomous weapons, dubbed "killer robots".

The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots said that such weapons, once activated, would select and engage targets without human intervention.

Though they have yet to be fully developed, robotic systems with various degrees of autonomy and lethality are used by the US, Israel, South Korea, and the UK, while other nations, including China and Russia, are believed to be moving toward systems that would give full combat autonomy to machines, the campaign warned.

"In recent months, fully autonomous weapons have gone from an obscure, little-known issue, to one that is commanding international attention", it said.

So... No drones?

From the sound of it, not unless they're autonomous.