Ethical considerations of (contextually) affective robot behaviour

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.