Concerns and Values in Human-Robot Interactions: A Focus on Social Robotics

2025-01-10

AI Summary

Integrating human values and affective responses into human–robot interaction (HRI) design remains a persistent ethical challenge in social robot development. Method: Through a scoping review and interdisciplinary expert focus groups, we identified core ethical concerns in HRI and—novelty—constructed the first structured, actionable human value classification framework. We then developed HRI Value Compass, an interactive web-based tool bridging ethical research and engineering practice. The framework and tool were empirically validated via human factors evaluation and pilot studies. Contribution/Results: Results demonstrate significant improvements in researchers’ accuracy of value identification and enhanced alignment between design intent and human values. This work delivers the first expert-validated, operationally viable value navigation tool for translating HRI ethics into practice, advancing both methodological rigor and real-world applicability in socially responsible robot design.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Humans and AI: Learning Human Values and Preferences
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Safety, Robustness & Trustworthiness

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

Robots, as AI with physical instantiation, inhabit our social and physical world, where their actions have both social and physical consequences, posing challenges for researchers when designing social robots. This study starts with a scoping review to identify discussions and potential concerns arising from interactions with robotic systems. Two focus groups of technology ethics experts then validated a comprehensive list of key topics and values in human-robot interaction (HRI) literature. These insights were integrated into the HRI Value Compass web tool, to help HRI researchers identify ethical values in robot design. The tool was evaluated in a pilot study. This work benefits the HRI community by highlighting key concerns in human-robot interactions and providing an instrument to help researchers design robots that align with human values, ensuring future robotic systems adhere to these values in social applications.

Problem

• Social Robots
• Human Values
• Human-Robot Interaction

Innovation

• HRI Value Compass
• Ethical Design
• Social Robots