Prof. Arkin

Abstract: The ways in which we treat each other, typically underpinned by an ethical theory, serve as a foundation for civilized activity. Bounds and requirements are established for normal and acceptable interactions between humans. If we are to create robotic systems to reside among us, they must also adhere to a set of related values that humans operate under.  This talk first describes the importance of such conventions in human-robot interaction, then outlines a way forward including the difficult research questions remaining to be confronted in ethical human robot interaction (HRI). In particular, examples involving architectures using ethical governors, moral emotions, responsibility advisors and theories of mind are described in two quite different contexts: warfare and the maintenance of human dignity in healthcare.  Even the role of deception must be considered as an important adjunct to HRI, as it may yield more effective intentional and autonomous social robots if properly deployed. Finally, we can consider how robots may eventually be able to engineer more socially just human beings via nudging and the ethical questions associated with using such devices.  

Biography:

Prof. Ronald C. Arkin is Professor Emeritus with the College of Computing at Georgia Tech.  Dr. Arkin served as a visiting Fellow/Scientist at number of universities in the world including Queensland University of Technology Australia, the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, the Sony Intelligence Dynamics Laboratory in Tokyo, Japan and the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Group in France.  Dr. Arkin’s research interests include behavior-based reactive control and action-oriented perception for mobile robots and unmanned aerial vehicles, hybrid deliberative/reactive software architectures, robot survivability, multiagent robotic systems, biorobotics, human-robot interaction, robot ethics, and learning in autonomous systems. He has over 230 technical publications in these areas. Prof. Arkin has written a textbook entitled Behavior-Based Robotics published by MIT Press in May 1998, co-edited (with G. Bekey) a book entitled Robot Colonies published in 1997, and a book published in Spring 2009 entitled Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots published by Chapman-Hall (Taylor & Francis). Funding sources have included the National Science Foundation, DARPA, DTRA, U.S. Army, Savannah River Technology Center, Honda R&D, Samsung, C.S. Draper Laboratory, SAIC, NAVAIR, and the Office of Naval Research. He also serves/served as a consultant for several major companies in the area of intelligent robotic systems. He has provided expert testimony to the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Pentagon and others on Autonomous Systems Technology. Prof. Arkin was named a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology in 2012 and a Distinguished Visitor for the IEEE Computer Society in 2023. He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 2003.