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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

| Aarhus University
| Aarhus University
| Aarhus University

“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.

Keywords: Integrative Social Robotics, Collingridge dilemma, ontology of asymmetric sociality, responsible robotics, participatory design, value-sensitive design, design for values, care-centered value-sensitive design, technomoral change, transdisciplinarity
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
  • References
Published online: 24 January 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18061.sei
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