Abstract
The rising interest in socially assistive robotics is, at least in part, stemmed by the aging population around the world. A lot of research and interest has gone into insuring the safety of these robots. However, little has been done to consider the necessary role of emotion in these robots and the potential ethical implications of having affect-aware socially assistive robots. In this chapter we address some of the considerations that need to be taken into account in the research and development of robots assisting a vulnerable population. We use two fictional scenarios involving a robot assisting a person with Parkinson’s disease to discuss five ethical issues relevant to affect-aware socially assistive robots.
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Notes
- 1.
This is not to say that there are not other critical issues pertaining to assistive robots, especially ones affect-aware robots. Designers need to consider the repercussions of a robot being able to capture and store the sort of data that is necessary for an affect-aware robot. This includes issues regarding invasiveness, privacy, and discomfort [17, 18]. Whether affect recognition technologies should be used to “fix” or augment human abilities is another concern [7]. By focusing on the social aspects of assistive robots we do not mean to ignore the challenges regarding the capture and storage of personal, affective data, but to focus on the underrepresented issues pertinent to social affect in the context of human-robot interaction.
- 2.
Whether or not these simulated emotions are “emotions” in the human sense is a discussion that is outside the scope of this paper.
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Acknowledgments
This work was in part supported by NSF grant #IIS- 1316809 and a grant from the Office of Naval Research, No. N00014-14-l-0144. The opinions expressed here are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF or ONR.
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Wilson, J.R., Scheutz, M., Briggs, G. (2016). Reflections on the Design Challenges Prompted by Affect-Aware Socially Assistive Robots. In: Tkalčič, M., De Carolis, B., de Gemmis, M., Odić, A., Košir, A. (eds) Emotions and Personality in Personalized Services. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31413-6_18
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