The seven troubles with norm-compliant robots

Many researchers from robotics, machine ethics, and adjacent fields seem to assume that norms represent good behavior that social robots should learn to benefit their users and society. We would like to complicate this view and present seven key troubles with norm-compliant robots: (1) norm biases, (2) paternalism (3) tyrannies of the majority, ...

Called Back Onstage: Dramaturgic Analysis, Domestic Social Robots, and Privacy

I argue that social robots installed inside homes produce a novel privacy problem when they invite their users to engage with them. To build my case, I introduce relevant concepts from Erving Goffman’s theory of Dramaturgic Analysis to interpret human-robot interactions. Following Goffman, I posit that we pre-reflectively adjust our behavior to...

More work for Roomba?: Domestic robots, housework and the production of privacy

Housework is hard work. Keeping our homes clean, tidy and comfortable takes effort and every moment we spend on housework (that we would prefer to avoid) means we have less time to devote to our private lives. Over the past two decades, numerous companies have created robots designed to relieve their owners of housework. Having robots take care...

More Than Meets the Eye? Robotisation and Normativity in the Dutch Construction Industry

Construction robots are becoming more common in the Netherlands, but remain rarities in contexts aside from state-of-the-art factories owned by wealthy or technologically-orientated companies. In its current state, the construction industry would have to change significantly to make room for robots. To understand whether these changes are...