CASE 2025 Workshop
Workshop on Ethical Considerations in Robotics and Automation (WECRA)
August 21 Morning in Los Angeles, California
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Welcome Thursday morning 08:00 in Room Corinthian in the conference venue
We are witnessing the transition of robots from labs to publicly accessible spaces where they interact more with a diverse range of people in different contexts. This requires an increased focus on Human-Robot-Interaction, raising inherent ethical and legal issues. The workshop will enable participants to better understand the impact of different assessments and potential measures concerning robot ethics on design and deployment. Gaining insight into current regulations, standards and initiatives addressing ethical and legal issues will benefit both researchers and developers. That is by considering how these can open new directions in robotics and automation research.
Being able to employ measures to address the implications and issues is vital to making robots more acceptable and trustworthy, and fundamental for responsible research and innovation. The workshop will cover key aspects through concrete examples from ongoing research projects, and applied work on legal considerations, development of relevant standards, universal design principles and more. This will be from an international perspective, with speakers representing the global north and south and with emphasis on gender, cultural and ethnic diversity.
There is no specific prerequisite knowledge required on ethics, legal, and social issues (ELSI). Thus, the workshop will target all attendees of the CASE 2025 conference.
The workshop is organized by the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society technical committee on Robot Ethics.
Workshop Objectives
The main objective of the workshop is to raise awareness, prompt debate and share knowledge about ethical, legal and user/social perspectives for robotics and automation in personal and public environments with humans.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, including robots, pose challenges and opportunities for the many domains it is now applied within automation. Amongst the relevant and essential aspects currently discussed are privacy, cybersecurity, safety, diversity, and inclusion considerations (Fosch-Villaronga and Mahler, 2021) and (Fosch-Villaronga and Drukarch, 2023). Another topic is the impact on workers’ mental health or potential job displacement caused by automation.
Thus, there is increasing attention on the ethical implications and legal issues related to robots and systems. Recently, the European Commission has proposed the regulations on Artificial Intelligence, e.g., the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) (European Commission 2021a), and the New Machinery Directive (MD) (European Commission 2021b). The AIA is the first of this kind in the world and will highly impact AI-based systems, including intelligent robots and other software that will be used, developed, or imported to Europe. Therefore, the AIA will contain key requirements for a global market for robots and AI systems. Other important ongoing efforts are defining standards for intelligent systems and studying design with user participation.
It is important to determine what legal frameworks need to be followed to ensure user safety in highly robotic environments. The workshop will provide an overview of the most pressing ethical and legal challenges surrounding the development and use of robots in human environments. The workshop aims to raise awareness about these topics and engage with the community to think about mitigating risks and ways to reduce the unfavorable impact on society. The workshop will illustrate the challenges related to privacy, security, safety, human autonomy and diversity of users through several examples. This will be by invited and contributing presenters from different continents and representing diversity in culture, gender, age, etc.
The IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robot Ethics (TCRE) has not been very active in recent years. However, its activity was re-started in 2024 with Jim Torresen (primary contact of this workshop proposal) as the corresponding co-chair. We see this workshop proposal as important to continue to develop and extent the activity of the technical committee. That regards both the focus areas and recruitment of relevant and active new members of the TC on Robot Ethics.
Workshop impact and value for the participants and learning objectives of the workshop:
● Getting an overview of the most commonly expressed ethical and legal considerations and potential measures with regard to robots and automation.
● Get insight into new ethical guidelines and standards related to AI and robots.
● Learn from and interact with other workshop attendees through plenary talks and discussion sessions and in smaller groups during a poster session.
● Provide an opportunity for potential future involvement in the activities of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robot Ethics.
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