Robotic bias: conceptualizing the phenomena of robotic facilitated discrimination

This research initiates the conceptualization of robotic bias, which we define as cases of discrimination that are uniquely facilitated by the robot’s embodied social interaction in real-life environments.

Consequently, the aim is to posit why and how precisely do social robots, in their own unique way, become capable of manifesting discrimination within real-life social interactions. Also, aim is to investigate what debiasing interaction strategies could social robots utilize to diminish discriminatory occurrences in real-life, public, environments.

Investigation begins with two interpretative categories – embodied imitation and embodied representation. For each of these, we will provide a number of illustrative cases which we will support with appropriate empirical and philosophical theories. Also, these interpretative categories will be utilized to generate debiasing interaction-strategies. Finally, we will show how cases of teleoperated social robots represent a distinctive dimension of robotic bias.

The output of this research can be utilized by a wide variety of stakeholders, such as robotic designers and policy makers, but is primarily targeted at human-robot interaction researchers.