Special issue on: Going beyond the laboratory—reconsidering the ELS implications of autonomous robots

Abstract

For more than three decades, robots have played a key role in industrial manufacturing. In other application fields, robots have replaced humans in hazardous jobs or served to alleviate the burden on those in knowledge-intensive professions. Robot technologies have even become indispensable in the field of warfare: they are deployed to clear land mines or as remotely controlled weapons such as combat drones (Sullins 2011). By contrast, recent developments in robotics highlight interactions with ordinary people. Service and welfare robots are making the transition from laboratory experiments to practical applications in multiple areas of life. It is generally assumed that in an ageing society, they will increasingly be used as service providers or social companions in everyday life situations (Wilks 2010; Feil-Seifer and Mataric 2011). Some of these robots are developed as humanoids, that is, machines that resemble human beings and/or are able to emulate human actions. If it seems helpful in facilitating their smooth interaction with lay users, they are designed to replicate emotional expressions and other aspects of human communication. These developments raise concerns about the consequences of direct contact between lay people and robots. The increasing use of robots in real-life contexts will have a profound effect on the human–machine relationship. It is thus important for lay users to learn how to deal with these robots. This is particularly true for those whose well-being requires constant support from others: when care is provided by robots, these people’s well-being will hinge primarily on robot performance. Going beyond the laboratory also poses a great challenge to robotics in that robots in the real world need to be independent entities that can orient themselves in dynamic environments, handle less predictable human actions and adhere to social norms. The increasing autonomy of robots deployed outside the laboratory requires new institutional frameworks to guide the expected human–machine relationship. From a sociological perspective, it is highly probable that society will not react unanimously to these developments. Different actors will adopt different views on what robots are and how they should be treated. The current approaches in social robotics, however, provide only a limited understanding of practical human–robot relationships, mainly due to their focus on the cognitive or affective dimensions of (more or less) idealized one-on-one interactions. Given that the envisaged interactions with robots will essentially take place during daily activities, the social embeddedness of these interactions, as well as the possible influence of heterogeneous actors, is not sufficiently taken into account. This special issue aims to reinvestigate the ethical, legal and societal issues emerging from the incorporation of autonomous robots into everyday practices by reflecting on the distinction between ‘‘within’’ and ‘‘beyond’’ the laboratory. The range of topics addressed here encompasses questions about the agency of sophisticated robot technologies, empirically grounded theorizing about situated human–robot interaction, normative issues of robot use in wider social contexts (such as the responsibility ascription & Gesa Lindemann gesa.lindemann@uni-oldenburg.de