What’s Touch Got to do with it? Exploring the Ethical Significance of Human-Robot Touch
In the same way that visual technologies have changed how we see the world, touchable robots will change how we feel the world. The robots of 2018 interact and even cooperate with humans in factory, professional, and personal settings – settings which will depend upon or result in moments of human-robot touch. The field of tactile human-robot interaction explores the safety and security issues associated with humans and robots coming into contact. To date, there exists a gap in the quantity and quality of discussions that consider the human experience of touching robots. This project aims to fill this gap in the robot ethics literature by addressing the following question: what is the ethical significance of human-robot touch? This project will write peer reviewed articles and a grant proposal which will build the foundations for an ethics of human-robot touch and provide recommendations for the designers and roboticists making touchable robots.
Selected Publications
Robots in Healthcare: design, development and implementation. 2016. Routledge. New York, NY.
“Critiquing the Reasons for Artificial Moral Agents”, Science and Engineering Ethics. (2018) DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-018-0030-8.
“The Dawning of the Ethics of Environmental Robots”, Science and Engineering Ethics. (2017, Online First). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-017-9990-3