Dagstuhl Seminar: Roadmap for Responsible Robotics

Responsible Robotics is an appealing goal. It captures the idea of developing and deploying physical autonomous systems for the benefit of both individuals and society. However, although a popular target, there are, as yet, no robustly reliable routes to achieving Responsible Robotics, and indeed a relative paucity of compelling pictures of precisely what “responsibility” here comprises.

This is the opening statement describing the motivation of the organizers to set up the Dagstuhl seminar Roadmap for responsible robotics. In this seminar, experts from a variety of fields and disciplines (philosophy, ethics, psychology, mathematics, computer science, artificial intelligence, engineering, business) got together to discuss what are they key themes necessary to make making robotics responsible, and importantly, how to translate these themes into practice. See the group photo below:

The group of experts at the Dagstuhl

The seminar started by outlining 4 themes considered critical for the implementation and integration of autonomous robots in different areas of society: Trust, Fairness, Predictability, and Understandability. These themes were further discussed and refined, with the goal of defining and disseminating a principles and practices necessary to ensure that robotics design, development, and deployment in society is conducted in a responsible manner, considering the interests of all  involved stakeholders, from end-users, to the robotics community, researchers, and private institutions, to government and regulatory agencies.

In representation of the VU and the Network Institute, Daniel Preciado (Assistant professor in Robot communication at the FSS’s Communication Science department) participated in this seminar and is still actively involved with the seminar community to continue the definition and dissemination of guidelines and recommendations to facilitate the responsible deployment of robots in modern society.

Thanks to Daniel Preciado for writing this post