Relational Enhancement: A Framework for Evaluating and Designing Human-Robot Relationship

2016

Conference: AAAI Workshop on AI, Ethics and Society

Wilson, Jason and Arnold, Thomas and Scheutz, Matthias

Much existing work examining the ethical behaviors of robots does not consider the impact and effects of long- term human-robot interactions. A robot teammate, col- laborator or helper is often expected to increase task performance, individually or of the team, but little dis- cussion is usually devoted to how such a robot should balance the task requirements with building and main- taining a “working relationship” with a human partner, much less appropriate social relations outside that team. We propose the “Relational Enhancement” framework for the design and evaluation of long-term interactions, which composed of interrelated concepts of efficiency, solidarity, and prosocial concern. We discuss how this framework can be used to evaluate common existing ap- proaches in cognitive architectures for robots and then examine how social norms and mental simulation may contribute to each of the components of the framework.

@inproceedings{wilsonetal16aies,
  title={Relational Enhancement: A Framework for Evaluating and Designing Human-Robot Relationship},
  author={Wilson, Jason and Arnold, Thomas and Scheutz, Matthias},
  year={2016},
  booktitle={AAAI Workshop on AI, Ethics and Society},
  url={https://hrilab.tufts.edu/publications/wilsonetal16aies.pdf}
}