Ethics and Sensibility in Designing a Social Robot for Care (with Care)

• In Event: Sensing Robots

Abstract

Over the last decades, robots have been developed with the aim of incorporating them into the social environments of our daily lives. One of the most prolific areas where we can witness such a process is the realm of health, specially with caring robots. Their abilities to interact with people open a huge bulk of possibilities to work on the emotional and social dimensions of health. Beyond the technological developments that this implies, new ethical, political, and social challenges are also raised. However, care robots’ development has not been accompanied by a broader and widespread reflection from the different actors concerned.
 
This paper will discuss some outcomes of the on-going research project "Ethics for robots: Some considerations for designing social robots for a children's hospital". The aim of the research is to develop an ethical framework for the design and use of robots for children's hospitals that includes meanings, priorities and sensibilities of several actors concerned. The research methodology is based on qualitative techniques, including: in-depth interviews to experts from different fields (political, legal, technological and medical); focus groups with health personnel; focus groups with family members of hospitalized children and; finally, a participative process with children with any kind of relationship with a children’s hospital.
 
Research and development of this ethical framework is done from the perspective of the ethics of care and empirical ethics. Furthermore, we take the opportunity that offers robotics’ development for reflecting about our own humankind and the sensibilities of the world we like to live in.

Authors

• Núria Vallès, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Miquel Domènech, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona