What does Responsible Robotics mean? Stretching roboticists’ horizons from an academic, government and philosophical perspective

With the imminent prospect of ubiquitous robotics in our everyday lives built off the back of transformative new changes in generative AI, as well as the ongoing debate around military robotics, autonomous vehicles and societal impact ranging from job losses to human empowerment, the time has never been more suitable for a discussion at the world’s leading robotics conference about what exactly Responsible Robotics entails. Building off a long legacy of consideration of this issue in robotics, most recently culminating in a Dagstuhl seminar on a Roadmap to Responsible Robotics, this workshop will bring together some of the leading roboticists, philosophers of moral responsibility and practical ethicists to teach, discuss and debate the key issues. A growing hunger and interest in this topic in both the robotics community and wider society suggests this will be a popular, engaging and thought provoking workshop.

The workshop will bring together experts beyond robotics, in the areas of philosophy, focusing on moral and practical ethics …, and industries including …. Our main goal is to discuss, with a highly self-reflective angle, the state-of-the-art in the domain of .. A major goal is to build common ground on the concept of responsible robotics, working from philosophical conception into the practical efforts being made in contemporary robotics…. Additionally, we aim to open new avenues for future interdisciplinary collaboration among participants and expect that this will significantly advance the field of responsible robotics.

The format of the workshop comprises four sessions. We will start with a tutorial on “Responsible robotics 101”. Then we will follow with two sessions with a well thought mix of invited talks with time for Q&A with the audience, and fourth session with a dedicated panel of experts and a moderator. The diversity of expertise will encourage a cross-domain perspective in … The invited talks will cover state-of-the-art challenges, developments, combined efforts and collaborations. Furthermore, the flow of the invited talks has been decided to ensure a good mix of academic, government and philosophical points of view, as well as theoretical and practical approaches.

Schedule

Time	Activity	Speaker(s)
9.00-10.00	Spotlight 1: Responsible Robotics and Government/Industry 9:00 Kate Conroy (Responsible Robotics and Government) 9:15 Daniel Kilov (Responsible AI) 9:30 Michael Fisher (Responsible Robotics and Government, online) 9:45 panel (all), moderated by Dejanira Araiza Illan
10:00-10.30	Coffee Break	Free Discussion
10.30-11.30	Tutorial: Responsibility and Philosophy 101 Pekka Mäkelä
11.30-12.30	Spotlight Talks Industry May Realize Robotics, but Academia Holds It Accountable Explainable is Responsible, or not? Our Mental for Their Metal: Nothing is Stopping Us From Becoming the Machines We Create Should Autonomous Surgical Robots be regarded as Surgeons?
12.30-14.00	Lunch	Free Discussion
14.00-15.30	Spotlight 2: Identifying ‘Responsible Robotics + Panel Discussion Aude Billard, Helen Beebee, Amir Patel, moderated by Sarah Moth-Lund Christensen
15.30-16.00	Coffee Break	Free Discussion
16.00-17.00	Open Panel: Responsible Robotics Moving Forward Teresa Vidal-Calleja, Dana Kulic, Emily Collins (online), moderated by Michael Milford

[NOW CLOSED] Call For Papers

Responsible Robotics is an inter-disciplinary workshop to be held at ICRA’24 (IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation) on the 13th of May in Yokohama, Japan. The workshop seeks to establish a new global research community spanning across disciplines dedicated to responsibility as a leading concept and concern in each part of the robotic life cycle.

To kickstart discussions in this new area, we are hosting a ‘Spotlight Statement Talk’ session at the workshop. The session will comprise of multiple invited 5-minute spotlight talks under the purposely broad umbrella of ‘Responsible Robotics’. Awards will be given to the most enlightening and impactful statements as follows:

1st prize $500
2nd prize $250
3rd prize $100

The session and the prizes are thanks to our generous sponsors:

IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Verification of Autonomous Systems
QUT Centre for Robotics

[NOW CLOSED] Submission Guidelines

For the Spotlight Statement Talks, we are therefore excited to invite submissions of anonymised short one-page statements on an issue or topic under the heading of ‘responsible robotics’ in pdf-form, to be sent to s.m.l.christensen@leeds.ac.uk

Please also include the following information in a separate document:

Name
Email
Institutional Affiliation
Department and Position
Title of Talk

We will take submissions until the 1st of May 2024 [NOW CLOSED]

Plan to solicit participation

We have extended individual invitations to a large list of speakers with a wide range of backgrounds (age, expertise, geographical areas, career stages, gender), to promote an inclusive environment for discussion and exchange of ideas.
We will advertise the workshop via global and regional mailing lists, e.g. robotics-worldwide, and leveraging on the IEEE RAS TC’s mailing lists.

Plan to encourage interaction among participants

The flow of the event will encourage the participants to learn, ideate and conceptualize throughout. There will be multiple Q&A instances during the tutorial, invited talks and panel discussion, guided by moderators. Questions will be collected digitally before and during the event. An online chat will be made available to continue with offline discussions.

What does Responsible Robotics mean?

Stretching roboticists’ horizons from an academic, government and philosophical perspective