Robot Policy
Everyday robots are here! We are studying how to facilitate better policymaking related to robots and how to help the general public understand the realities of robotic systems.
Problem
As more robots appear in everyday settings (such as sidewalk delivery robots that are beginning to spring up in cities and on college campuses), potential issues and opportunities also arise related to these systems. For example, robots might increase sidewalk congestion or create confusing traffic patterns. At the same time, they might provide easier food access to students who are having a health emergency. On the regulation side, policymakers might not inherently understand how robots work at a sufficient level to create policy that will be effective and grounded in reality.
Solution
We are working on understanding the current expectations, value systems, potential problems, and policy thinking surrounding sidewalk delivery robots through a range of approaches from conducting person-on-the-street interviews to administering video interventions and measuring their effects. Through this range of approaches, we seek to collect insights that could help to inform policymakers on how to think about interactions between robots and the local community that surrounds them, in addition to offering easy-to-digest and even entertaining educational interventions that can help people to better understand the realities of modern robotic systems.
Publications
- Adeline Schneider, Ayan Robinson, Cindy Grimm, and Naomi T. Fitter, "How Do Starship Robots Affect Everyday Campus Life? An Exploratory Posting Board Analysis and Interview-Based Study," Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Human and Robot Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), Pasadena, CA, USA, 2024. [BibTeX] [PDF]
- Ayan Robinson, Cindy Grimm, and Naomi T. Fitter, "Using Video-Based Interventions to Enhance Public Understanding of Delivery Robots," Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Human and Robot Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), Pasadena, CA, USA, 2024. [BibTeX] [PDF]
- Ayan Robinson, Cindy Grimm, Ruth West, and Naomi T. Fitter, "An Exploration of Mock Scenarios as a Prospective Method for Informing Law and Policy Thinking on Service Robotics," Companion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Boulder, CO, USA, 2024. [BibTeX] [PDF]
- Anisha Bontula, David Danks, and Naomi T. Fitter, "The Ambiguity of Robot Rights," Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR), Doha, Qatar, 2023. [BibTeX] [PDF]
- Ayan Robinson, Lily Oliphant, Jerrod O. Loomis, Sogol Balali, Naomi T. Fitter, and Cindy Grimm, "How Do Food Delivery Robots Affect Everyday Campus Life? An Exploratory Interview- Based Study," Proceedings of The Last-Mile Robotics Workshop: Envisioning Effective, Sustainable and Human-Centric Delivery, held in conjunction with the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Detroit, MI, USA, 2023. [BibTeX] [PDF]
- Naomi T. Fitter and Philip M. Nichols, "Applying the capability approach to the ethical design of robots," Proceedings of the HRI Workshop on The Emerging Policy and Ethics of Human-Robot Interaction, held in conjunction with the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Portland, OR, USA, 2015. [BibTeX] [PDF]