Roboethics as a Design Challenge: Lessons Learned from the Roboethics to Design and Development Competition
Jimin Rhim, Cheng Lin, Alexander Werner, Brandon DeHart, Vivian Qiang, Shalaleh Rismani, AJung Moon
Abstract
How do we make concrete progress towards de-signing robots that can navigate ethically sensitive contexts? Almost two decades after the word ‘roboethics’ was coined, translating interdisciplinary roboethics discussions into techni-cal design still remains a daunting task. This paper describes our first attempt at addressing these challenges through a roboethics-themed design competition. The design competition setting allowed us to (a) formulate ethical considerations as an engineering design task that anyone with basic programming skills can tackle; and (b) develop a prototype evaluation scheme that incorporates diverse normative perspectives of multiple stakeholders. The initial implementation of the competition was held online at the RO-MAN 2021 conference. The competition task involved programming a simulated mobile robot (TIAGo) that delivers items for individuals in the home environment, where many of these tasks involve ethically sensitive con-texts (e.g., an underage family member asks for an alcoholic drink). This paper outlines our experiences implementing the competition and the lessons we learned. We highlight design competitions as a promising mechanism to enable a new wave of roboethics research equipped with technical design solutions.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{icra2022_roboethicsasades,
title = {Roboethics as a Design Challenge: Lessons Learned from the Roboethics to Design and Development Competition},
author = {Jimin Rhim and Cheng Lin and Alexander Werner and Brandon DeHart and Vivian Qiang and Shalaleh Rismani and AJung Moon},
booktitle = {ICRA 2022},
year = {2022}
}