Who Owns The Robot?: Four Ethical and Socio-technical Questions about Wellbeing Robots in the Real World through Community Engagement

2025-09-01

AI Summary

This study addresses four core ethical challenges in the real-world deployment of welfare robots: safety risks, identification of target users and co-creators, data and device ownership, and justification of robotic intervention necessity. Employing community-based participatory co-design, we collected qualitative data using a Social Robotics Ethics Canvas and conducted systematic thematic analysis. Our contribution is a novel, forward-looking ethical reflection framework grounded in pluralistic stakeholder perspectives. It identifies four critical thematic domains—safety assurance, user–stakeholder rights and responsibilities, data governance, and technological appropriateness—and translates them into actionable, context-sensitive ethical governance pathways for health robotics development. By embedding ethical deliberation directly within design practice, the framework advances substantive alignment between technological innovation and public welfare. (138 words)

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Safety, Robustness & Trustworthiness
• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Machine Learning: Ethics, Bias, and Fairness

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

Recent studies indicate that robotic coaches can play a crucial role in promoting wellbeing. However, the real-world deployment of wellbeing robots raises numerous ethical and socio-technical questions and concerns. To explore these questions, we undertake a community-centered investigation to examine three different communities' perspectives on using robotic wellbeing coaches in real-world environments. We frame our work as an anticipatory ethical investigation, which we undertake to better inform the development of robotic technologies with communities' opinions, with the ultimate goal of aligning robot development with public interest. We conducted workshops with three communities who are under-represented in robotics development: 1) members of the public at a science festival, 2) women computer scientists at a conference, and 3) humanities researchers interested in history and philosophy of science. In the workshops, we collected qualitative data using the Social Robot Co-Design Canvas on Ethics. We analysed the collected qualitative data with Thematic Analysis, informed by notes taken during workshops. Through our analysis, we identify four themes regarding key ethical and socio-technical questions about the real-world use of wellbeing robots. We group participants' insights and discussions around these broad thematic questions, discuss them in light of state-of-the-art literature, and highlight areas for future investigation. Finally, we provide the four questions as a broad framework that roboticists can and should use during robotic development and deployment, in order to reflect on the ethics and socio-technical dimensions of their robotic applications, and to engage in dialogue with communities of robot users. The four questions are: 1) Is the robot safe and how can we know that?, 2) Who is the robot built for and with?, 3) Who owns the robot and the data?, and 4) Why a robot?.

Problem

• Exploring ethical concerns in real-world wellbeing robot deployment
• Investigating community perspectives on robotic wellbeing coaches
• Addressing ownership, safety, and purpose of wellbeing robots

Innovation

• Community-centered investigation using workshops
• Qualitative data analysis with Thematic Analysis
• Framework of four ethical questions for development