Survey-Based Discussions on Morally Contentious Applications of Interactive Robotics

We have many robots here at the CARIS lab.

From Betty and Roger (our CRS robots) to the latest addition to our lab, Charlie (PR2 from Willow Garage), these robotic platforms are here for us to test out new things, explore our ideas, and help answer our research questions.

But there are questions within robotics that cannot be easily answered by looking at robots alone.

One such question involves the ethics of robotics. With the help of Dr. Peter Danielson from the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics at UBC, two researchers from the lab (AJung Moon and Dr. Mike van der Loos) took on a quest to explore what the public thinks about robots being used for the military and eldercare.

Using a novel survey instrument that allows participants to not only choose Yes, Neutral, No answers, but also type in, or vote for, particular reasons for their answers, Dr. Danielson's group had collected expert and lay opinions about different applications of robots from over 250 survey participants.

We were particularly interested in whether and why people would reject or accept using a robot for military or eldercare purposes.

In the first question we analysed, the participants discussed upon the following question: "Should remote controlled Predators be armed with lethal weapons in combat?". A short description of Predators, unmanned aerial vehicle used in battlefields today, were given to the participants in a short paragraph. More people answered No (53%) to this question, than Yes (35%).

The use of Predators were, somewhat unsurprisingly, much more rejected when we asked "Should fully autonomous lethally armed Predators be developed?". Over 80% of the participants answered No to this question. But why is this a somewhat unsurprising result when a fully autonomous Predator robot can provide the same (or maybe even more) advantages?

Then we presented them with a paragraph describing a bathing robot for seniors. We asekd "Should
robots replace humans for some tasks in the physical care of the old?" According to the survey, 66% of the participants said Yes, while only 7% answered No. Why?

More thorough look at the participants' reasons for choosing particular answers shed some light onto the questions of why.

Our study tells us that people's decisions may be based on whether the level of the robot's autonomy is acceptable for the particular application in question. Only then, do people talk about the pros and cons of the technology itself. For example, principle based reasoning ("robots should never be used to kill people") outweighed the benefits of the technology ("robots can be effective combat weapons that can be used at a safe distance from combat") in the discussion of Predators.

This work, titled "Survey-Based Discussions on Morally Contentious Applications of Interactive Robotics", outlines what people said to the three abovementioned questions and why.
For more information about what the public has to say about the military and eldercare robots, please take a look at our recent publication on the International Journal of Social Robotics. It can be found as an OnlineFirst article here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/d2up524805805354/