WHAT IS A ROBOT COMPANION?
TASKS
ROLES
TYPES OF ROBOT COMPANIONS
COLLABORATORS
SUITS
EXPLORERS
BODY AUGUMENTATION SYSTEM

WIDELY USED ROBOT COMPANIONS
• CleanMate
• Dressman
• RoboMower
• Aibo
• Spykee
• Wakamaru
• RIBA
• DiGORO

• By 2050,Imagine every home will have a robot as a member of their family!!!
• If these robots can feel pain, should they be granted certain rights?
• If robots develop emotions, as some experts think they will, should they be allowed to marry humans?
• Should they be allowed to own property? Do they be provided with citizenship?

1.A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or
Second Law.

• Automated robots or robots commanded by humans?
• Emotional robots
• Robots can affect human relationships
• Robots may affect human’s privacy

Disclosure of information: a) existence of malware b) behavior of robot in front of others c) design (fault programming, on purpose)

• Usually suffer from isolation – loneliness
• Robots’ Reaction in different situations
• Robots’ Tolerance
• Robots’ Responses

• Robot nannies
Ethical and social issues
• Privacy
• Restraints
• Deception
• Accountability
• Psychological Damage

Robots’ rights
• Robot Ethics Charter
• (ISO, 2006a) has set of rules—especially ISO 10218-1:2006
• Further study : legislation – children’s negligence

• Noel Sharkey, COMPUTER SCIENCE: The Ethical Frontiers of Robotics,
(Science 19 December 2008: Vol. 322. no. 5909, pp. 1800 – 1801 DOI:
10.1126/science.1164582), Department of Computer Science,
University of Sheffield, Sheffield.
• The Burden of Embodied Autonomy: Some Reflections on the Social
and Ethical Implications of Autonomous Robots, Matthias Scheutz -
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Charles R. Crowell
- Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN
46556, USA.
• Linda A.Murray and John T.E. Richardson, Intelligent Systems in a
Human Context, Development, Implications and Applications, Oxford
Science Publications, 1989.
• Lawrence E. Hinman, Robotic Companions: Some ethical questions to
consider, Department of Philosophy, University of San Diego, USA,
2009.

• Dag Sverre Syrdal, Michael L. Walters, Nuno Otero, Kheng Lee
Koay and Kerstin Dautenhahn, "He Knows When You Are Sleeping"
– Privacy and the Personal Robot Companion, Adaptive Systems
Research Group, School of Computer Science, University of
Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, 2007.
• Noel Sharkey, Amanda Sharkey. The crying shame of robot
nannies: an ethical appraisal. Interaction Studies, Volume 11,
Number 2, 161-190(30), 2010.
• Robot companions for citizens by Paolo Dario, Micro-
BioRobotics,Department of Micro-BioRobotics, from Italian
Institute of Technology.
• Yueh-Hsuan Weng, Chien-Hsun Chen and Cheun-Tsai Sun,” Safety

• Yueh-Hsuan Weng, Chien-Hsun Chen and Cheun-Tsai Sun,” Safety
Intelligence and Legal Machine Language-Do we need the Three
Laws of Robotics? ”, in Yoshihiko Takahashi (Ed.) Service Robot
Applications, Vienna: Intec Education & Publishing, August 2008.
ISBN 978-953-7619-00-8 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/weng_yueh_hsuan/3
• The Social Computer – Combining machine and human by
Fausto Giunchiglia, Computer Science and Information
Engineering, University of Trento.
• Exploratory Workshop on the Social Impacts of Robotics:
Summary and Issues compiled by office of technology assessment, United States of America.
• A Robot in Every Home by Bill gates, published in scientific
American Inc,Janauary,2007. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/A_Robot_in_Every_Home