Ethical considerations of (contextually) affective robot behaviour

Van Maris, A; Zook, N; Caleb-Solly, P; Studley, M; Winfield, A; Dogramadzi, S

Abstract

The use of social robots can bring many benefits, but raises ethical concerns as well. One of these concerns, emotional deception, was investigated in this research. First, affective robot behaviour is validated, followed by a user study to investigate the effect of story context and affective behaviour on user's affect, perception of the robot and acceptance of the robot. Results show that the implemented affective robot behaviours are perceived as intended, and that there is little influence of these affective robot behaviours on people's affect, perception of the robot and acceptance of the robot. It was found that story context has an influence on the was users interpret the emotion of the robot, where a somber context provided in a lower score for happiness. These results raise awareness to practically validate theoretically founded ethical concerns, as these concerns limit the future development and benefits of social robots.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: International Conference on Robot Ethics and Standards
• Start Date: Aug 20, 2018
• End Date: Aug 21, 2018
• Acceptance Date: Jun 24, 2018
• Publication Date: Aug 21, 2018
• Deposit Date: Mar 22, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 24, 2021
• Series Title: Hybrid Worlds: Societal and Ethical Challenges. Proceedings of the International Conference on Robot Ethics and Standards
• Book Title: Proceedings of the International Conference on Robot Ethics and Standards
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13180/icres.2018.20-21.08.002
• Keywords: Social Robots; Ethics; Affect; Context
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/7229340
• Publisher URL: https://clawar.org/conference-proceedings/icres-conference/icres-2018-proceedings/