Special issue on Responsible Robotics: Introduction
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EDITORIAL
Special issue on Responsible Robotics: Introduction Aimee van Wynsberghe1 · Noel Sharkey2
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Robot applications in our personal and professional lives are increasing at a rapid pace. Manufacturing robots are transforming grocery store warehouses and online shopping distribution centers. Robotized dairy farms with robots to milk cows, clean stalls, and feed animals are re-conceptualizing the practice of farming. Robot greeters in stores, banks and hospitals, are re-inventing the ‘personal touch’ in marketing. The responsible use of robots may have incredible benefits for humanity, from monitoring and repairing climate change destruction to the replacing of humans in dangerous, life threatening tasks. Despite the success and efficiency that robots promise to bring, however, there are societal and ethical issues that need to be addressed if robotics is to thrive in academia and industry. Some of the concerns in relation to the robotics and automation of today focus on the potential loss of jobs, the quality of jobs available, privacy concerns for data collected, and human rights issues when targeting vulnerable demographics as users/consumers of robots (e.g. children, elderly persons, hospital patients), to name a few. To exacerbate these issues consumers have little trust in many technology companies when the dominant corporations continue to prove themselves unworthy of society’s trust by demonstrating a lack of concern for privacy, coercion, and democracy or democratic process. If robotics is truly to succeed in making our world a better place, the public must be able to place their trust in the designers, developers, implementers and regulators of robot technologies. To do this, we must engage in the responsible research and innovation of robot development processes as well as the resulting products of such processes; what has come to be known as responsible robotics.
Responsible robotics is a term that has recently ‘come into vogue’, yet the understanding of whatresponsible robotics means is still in development. In recent years, research courses,1 workshops,2 and articles3 have been dedicated to the topic. This area of research is aimed at shining a light on how academia, industry and policy makers should anticipate and account for possible negative side effects of new and emerging robot applications. To do this it is necessary to uncover the ethical issues at stake, explain how/why these issues are problematic, and explore ways in which they can be mitigated or prevented. Thus, responsible robotics has an enormous task ahead to both raise awareness of possible harms as well as assist in their prevention. The co-editors of this special issue, Aimee van Wynsberghe and Noel Sharkey, are also the co-founders of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics (FRR), a not-for-profit organization established in the Netherlands in 2016,4 dedicated to bridging the policy gap between technical and ethical work happening in robotics. The FRR defines responsible robotics as: the responsible
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