Ethics and robot democratization: reflecting on integrative ethics practices

Abstract

This paper aims to address the need for new integrative approaches to aid the further development of robot ethics as a research field. It presents observations gathered in a collaborative robotics project that pursued an integrative ethics approach. The paper first contextualizes the increasing attention to ethical approaches in robotics development, design and implementation. Several existing considerations and attempts to further integrate ethics into the field of robotics are reviewed, while also providing context with respect to new trends that generate new possibilities for integrating ethical approaches into robotics and human-robot interaction research. Subsequently, the paper elaborates on the specificities of the collaborative robotics project that pursued an integrative approach. The collaborative robot is presented as a specific type of technological artifact, and insight is given into the project’s aim to “democratize” this technology. Furthermore, practices required to integrate ethics are reviewed based on the author’s observations and experiences in the project. Finally, to contribute to the further development of integrative approaches in robot ethics, these observations are developed into three constitutive components that should aid the further development of integrative robot ethics approaches, namely: increased attention for the way interdisciplinarity is defined in the field of robot ethics, the role and nature of ethical critique, and finally the chances integrative approaches offer for the development of more thorough anticipatory concepts.