Designing socially assistive robots: a relational approach

There is increasing interest in social robots as assistive technologies to support a wide range of potential user groups. Nevertheless, the widespread use of robots has been challenged in terms of their efficacy and benefits as well as the ethics of employing robots in social roles. For instance, it has been suggested that robots are incapable of being truly social and therefore that any use of social robots as assistive technology is intrinsically deceptive. This contribution addresses this controversy, building on a relational view of human-robot interaction, which asserts that sociality has less to do with the essential natures of the human and robot actors involved, and more to do with the patterns and consequences of their interaction. From this starting position we consider and explore four design principles for social robots and compare/contrast these with the view of design “transparency” that robots should behave to reveal their true machine nature.