Grand Challenges around Designing Computers'Control Over Our Bodies

2026-01-27

AI Summary

This work addresses the profound challenges to bodily autonomy, interactive experience, and ethics posed by emerging technologies—such as exoskeletal actuators and electrical muscle stimulation—that enable computers to exert control over the human body. Moving beyond treating “bodily control” merely as a technical functionality, this project elevates it to a central concern in human-computer interaction (HCI). Through an interdisciplinary expert workshop integrating perspectives from HCI, wearable computing, and ethical design, the study proposes a structured “Grand Challenges” framework encompassing four interrelated dimensions: technology, design, users, and ethics. This framework not only clarifies critical directions for future research but also establishes a new, body-centered agenda for HCI, providing a foundational structure for subsequent scholarly and design inquiry.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Human-Computer Interaction
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Research challenges in human and human-AI computation
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

Advances in emerging technologies, such as on-body mechanical actuators and electrical muscle stimulation, have allowed computers to take control over our bodies. This presents opportunities as well as challenges, raising fundamental questions about agency and the role of our bodies when interacting with technology. To advance this research field as a whole, we brought together expert perspectives in a week-long seminar to articulate the grand challenges that should be tackled when it comes to the design of computers'control over our bodies. These grand challenges span technical, design, user, and ethical aspects. By articulating these grand challenges, we aim to begin initiating a research agenda that positions bodily control not only as a technical feature but as a central, experiential, and ethical concern for future human-computer interaction endeavors.

Problem

• bodily control
• human-computer interaction
• agency
• ethical challenges
• emerging technologies

Innovation

• bodily control
• human-computer interaction
• electrical muscle stimulation
• on-body actuators
• research agenda