Article published In: Envisioning Social Robotics: Current challenges and new interdisciplinary methodologies
Edited by Glenda Hannibal and Astrid Weiss
[Interaction Studies 21:1] 2020
► pp. 111–144
Integrative social robotics, value-driven design, and transdisciplinarity
Published online: 24 January 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18061.sei
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18061.sei
Abstract
“Integrative Social Robotics” (ISR) is a new approach or general method for generating social robotics
applications in a responsible and “culturally sustainable” fashion. Currently social robotics is caught in a basic difficulty we
call the “triple gridlock of description, evaluation, and regulation”. We briefly recapitulate this problem and then present the
core ideas of ISR in the form of five principles that should guide the development of applications in social robotics.
Characteristic of ISR is to intertwine a mixed method approach (i.e., conducting experimental, quantitative, qualitative, and
phenomenological research for the same envisaged application) with conceptual and axiological analysis as required in professional
studies in applied ethics; moreover, ISR is value-driven and abides by the “Non-Replacement Principle”:
Social robots may only do what humans should but cannot do. We briefly compare ISR to other value-sensitive
or value-directed design models, with a view to the task of overcoming the triple gridlock. Finally, working from an advanced
classification of pluridiscplinary research, we argue that ISR establishes a research format that can turn social robotics into a
new transdiscipline.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The motivation for ISR: A triple gridlock
- 2.1The description problem in social robotics
- 2.2The evaluation and regulation problem; closing the negative feedback loop
- 3.Five principles of ISR
- 4.Value-driven versus value-sensitive design
- 5.Social robotics – interdiscipline or transdiscipline?
- 6.Conclusion
- Notes
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