Conference Topics

To ensure thematic cohesion Robophilosophy 2026 can only accept papers that focus on one of the following main topics (subtopics are listed for illustration):

(1) Environmental Robotics and Society

• Robo-ethics and environmental ethics
• Legal, ethical, socio-cultural aspects of environmental robotics 
• Case studies of environmental robotics (energy consumption, climate degradation, prevention of ecological degradation, etc.)
• Ethical/socio-cultural aspects of nanorobotics and synthetic biology

(2) The Future of Human Work (ethical, socio-political, socio-cultural perspectives)

• Connectedness and transformations of power structures
• Expectable transformations of the labour market
• Expectable transformations of the economy
• Forms of human-robot co-working  (hybrid intelligence, hybrid agency)
• Expectable transformations of forms of governance
• Expectable transformations in health care and education 

(3) Implications of Automation for Human Existence and Self-Understanding

• Hybrid intelligence and agency for human self-understanding
• Automation and the meaning of human work
• Meaning of work in human life
• Automation and the intrinsic value of humans
• The future of human identities (automation and cultural degradation)
• The “robotification” (Nørskov) of human social interactions
• The significance of human emotions and phenomenal consciousness
• Transformations of citizenship: connections between decreases in economic indispensability, moral authority, and political significance 

(4) Social Relations and the Status of Artificial Social Agents

• Typology of artificial social agents (in terms of connection profiles or affordance profiles)
• Simulation, capacity attribution, embodiment and the moral standing of artificial social agents 
• Agentive AI and the debate about robot rights 

(5) Assignment of Responsibility and Accountability

• Responsibility models for highly distributed and connected agency (prospective, retrospective)
• Procedures for responsible technology development (especially in relation to the EU AI Act)
• Case studies of risk assessments
• Critiquing extant categories of risk assessment (psychological, ethical, cultural, safety risks…)
• Auditing procedures for accountability and ethical viability, in compliance with regulations that are formulated in terms of risks (EU AI Act)

(6) Responsible Technology Development

• Case studies in HRI/social robotics on applications with value-driven R&D models
• How to increase acceptance of extant value-driven R&D models among engineers
• New methods for translating risks and values into design and deployment
• The role of design (physical, interactional) for responsible robotics
• New frameworks and instruments for assessing interaction quality

(7) Connectedness, Complexity, and Interdisciplinarity

• New pathways to interdisciplinary integration, descriptive frameworks, methodologies, experimental frameworks, etc.
• Empirical studies in HRI (experiments, real life studies), presented in wider perspective of cultural significance
• Case studies: Significance of Humanities/Social Science research for HRI and social robotics 
• Significance of social robotics for philosophical (/Humanities) disciplines
• Case studies of “axiological futurism” (Danaher)

(8) Global Perspectives and Wide-Scope Transformation

• AI and social robotics as pathways to achieve the UN development goals
• The prospects of artificial consciousness
• The alignment problem
• Critiques of transformative ideologies (see the “TESCREAL bundle”, Gebru & Torres) 
• Nature and human nature
• Security and military robotics