Responsible Robotics: How Robots Become Socially Acceptable
A glance at the Lego models created by participants in a workshop on 'responsible robotics' quickly reveals that views on the topic of 'robots in care' can vary widely. A rotating camera symbolizes the autonomy of a robot, a small flower represents compassion, and a stack of books represents documentation, responsibility, and transparency. The goal of the Lego Serious Play interaction method chosen for the workshop was to develop a shared vision of the future of research between engineers and nursing researchers—or, to put it more precisely, to build one. The apparent contradictions were intentional: Ruth Müller, Alena Buyx, and Sami Haddadin from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Iris Eisenberger from the University of Graz were involved in the 'Responsible Robotics' research project from April 2020 to the end of June 2023. They represented different scientific backgrounds. The task of the research, funded by the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt), was to reconcile the perspectives of science and technology policy, ethics, robotics, and law within just under three years. In simpler terms: to find a robot that meets social, ethical, legal, and technical requirements.
Identifying effects of technologies during development
Whether through workshops, discussion rounds, a TUM Project Week with students from different disciplines, or Lego Serious Play: "We want to make the societal dimension of technology tangible," says Ruth Müller, Professor of Science and Technology Policy at TUM. "It is important to identify potential effects of innovative technologies during the development process." In the context of 'robotics in care,' robots could support care in daily work, but at the same time, important routines in care could be fundamentally changed. That's why it's essential to integrate the perspectives of caregivers into the development process. "Robots should support caregivers in their work and expertise, not replace them," says Müller, who sees robotics as a flexible technology, "whose social consequences depend on many decisions and values during development."
Nursing researchers not as technology-averse as expected
Little surprisingly, researchers from the nursing field focused on the needs of caregivers and those being cared for, while engineers were more concerned with creating cutting-edge technologies, according to results from the Lego Serious Play sessions. Nevertheless, there are no clear lines of division in either the nursing or technology factions. "Nursing researchers turned out to be much less technology-averse than sometimes assumed," says innovation researcher Svenja Breuer from the Department of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) at the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology. While nursing students see robots as an opportunity to automate processes and hand over tedious documentation duties, nursing researchers also scrutinize whether the use of robotic applications actually improves the well-being of elderly and care-dependent individuals. And yes, engineers and computer scientists dream of a largely autonomously acting service robot. But the "truth" for the ultimate solution lies somewhere in between.
Datarecorder: Transparency for rehabilitation and telemedical treatment
A good example of tangible technology and ultimately a consequence of interdisciplinary considerations is the Datarecorder for the care robot GARMI from the Geriatronics Research Center of the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI). The central question is: Who is responsible if a care robot injures a patient? Is it the caregiver's fault, the doctor who ordered the treatment, or the programmer who made a mistake in the algorithm? The Datarecorder records the entire treatment and virtualizes this process. "We record the interaction of the human with the robot to be able to understand exactly what happened in the event of an accident. This documentation is incredibly important, especially for vulnerable population groups such as older and physically or mentally impaired individuals we deal with," says researcher Maximilian Braun from the STS team. The principle: Using the Datarecorder, all forces that occur during, for example, a rehabilitation treatment are processed and made visible—virtually and anonymously. Simulation models thus make the entire process of rehabilitation or telemedical treatment by the care robot transparent. "This way, everyone can understand why something went wrong," says researcher Breuer, who is pleased that a "truly interdisciplinary paper" has recently been published on the Datarecorder, with contributions from technically, socially, ethically, and legally knowledgeable researchers.
The socially acceptable robot: User-oriented, well-integrated, created in teamwork
Ob mithilfe von Workshops, in Diskussionsrunden, einer TUM Project Week mit Studierenden aus unterschiedlichen Studienrichtungen oder Lego Serious Play: „Wir wollen die gesellschaftliche Dimension von Technologie greifbar machen“, sagt die Professorin für Wissenschafts- und Technologiepolitik an der TUM, Ruth Müller. „Wichtig ist, potenzielle Effekte von innovativen Technologien schon während des Entwicklungsprozesses zu identifizieren“. Im Kontext 'Robotik in der Pflege' könnten Roboter zwar die Pflege im Arbeitsalltag unterstützen, doch gleichzeitig könnten dadurch auch wichtige Routinen in der Pflege grundlegend verändert werden. Darum ist es essentiell, die Perspektiven von Pflegenden in den Entwicklungsprozess zu integrieren. „Roboter sollen Pflegekräfte in ihrer Arbeit und Expertise unterstützen, nicht ersetzen“, so Müller, die Robotik als eine flexible Technologie ansieht, deren „soziale Konsequenzen von vielen Entscheidungen und Wertsetzung während der Entwicklung abhängen“.
Additional Information
Dr. Daniel Tiger, a scientist from the Chair of Ethics in Medicine and Health Technologies at TUM, explains the "Responsible Robotics" project: https://youtu.be/Hq97gfgT7XA
Publications
Jon Skerlj, Maximilian Braun, Sophia Witz, Svenja Breuer, Marieke Bak, Sebastian Scholz, Abdeldjallil Naceri, Ruth Muller, Sami Haddadin, Iris Eisenberger; Data Recording for Responsible Robotics; 2023 - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10187414
Svenja Breuer, Maximilian Braun, Daniel Tigard, Alena Buyx, Ruth Müller; How Engineers’ Imaginaries of Healthcare Shape Design and User Engagement: A Case Study of a Robotics Initiative for Geriatric Healthcare AI Applications; 2023 - https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3577010
Additional Information