Ethical Participatory Design of Social Robots Through Co-Construction of Participatory Design Protocols

Abstract

Ethics have become a core consideration in human-robot interaction (HRI) due to ample opportunity for both positive and negative impact on humans. HRI literature has expounded on ways to produce ethical social robots, especially participatory design (PD) that integrates anticipated users and other stakeholders as designers themselves to ensure their values are integrated into robot design. We draw attention to the ethics of participation in robot design, distinct from the ethics of the robot ultimately designed. We propose an approach to foregrounding ethics in PD processes through co-construction of robot PD protocols with stakeholders. We call this ”pre-PD” because it entails expanding the boundaries of PD beyond the product of design (the robot) to also include the participatory activities that enable design. Contributions of the paper include: (1) a case study of pre-PD for sexual violence mitigation robots to demonstrate feasibility of stakeholders co-constructing robot PD protocols, and (2) an actionable framework for HRI researchers to use when constructing their own PD protocols with stakeholders, informed by reflection on the case study.