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A Survey of Expectations About the Role of Robots in Robot-Assisted Therapy for Children with ASD: Ethical Acceptability, Trust, Sociability, Appearance, and Attachment

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Abstract

The use of robots in therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) raises issues concerning the ethical and social acceptability of this technology and, more generally, about human–robot interaction. However, usually philosophical papers on the ethics of human–robot-interaction do not take into account stakeholders’ views; yet it is important to involve stakeholders in order to render the research responsive to concerns within the autism and autism therapy community. To support responsible research and innovation in this field, this paper identifies a range of ethical, social and therapeutic concerns, and presents and discusses the results of an exploratory survey that investigated these issues and explored stakeholders’ expectations about this kind of therapy. We conclude that although in general stakeholders approve of using robots in therapy for children with ASD, it is wise to avoid replacing therapists by robots and to develop and use robots that have what we call supervised autonomy. This is likely to create more trust among stakeholders and improve the quality of the therapy. Moreover, our research suggests that issues concerning the appearance of the robot need to be adequately dealt with by the researchers and therapists. For instance, our survey suggests that zoomorphic robots may be less problematic than robots that look too much like humans.

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Notes

  1. Note that there can be at least two kinds of arguments for taking into account people’s perceptions. One is a pragmatic one and is mainly the point of view of the robotics researcher: in order to ensure social acceptance of technology, one needs to take into account people’s perceptions, even if “we”, researchers, know what is objective and real. There is little point in developing robots for therapy if the end user (patient) has no subjective feeling of comfort when interacting with the robot. Another argument requests attention to perceptions based on the philosophical position that questions the very distinction between “objective” versus “subjective” knowledge (even scientific knowledge is a kind of perception, a way of seeing, a perspective) and that sees the exclusion of the view of lay people on the grounds that it could be based on “ignorance” or “error” as problematic. The authors of this paper sympathize with the latter argument and position, that is, assume that scientific views should not necessarily have epistemic, moral, and political priority but should be part of a broader discussion in which other voices should also be heard and valued.

  2. Note also that this discussion raises the philosophical question what sociality is, and invites critical reflection on how we (therapists, society) define and deal with autism spectrum disorders, also in different therapeutical situations and at different times and places.

  3. Note that it may have been better to ask about “children with ASD” and “children suspected to have ASD”, rather than “children with autism”.

  4. In this paper we assume that all stakeholders should have a say. This may mean various things and invites larger questions and discussions about technology and democracy, but in this article we limit ourselves to using the very concrete tool of the survey to give stakeholders a chance to give their opinion on the use and development of the new technology under consideration.

  5. https://www.aldebaran.com/en/humanoid-robot/nao-robot.

  6. http://www.mykeepon.com/.

  7. http://probo.vub.ac.be/Probo/.

  8. http://www.herts.ac.uk/kaspar/the-social-robot.

  9. http://www.iromec.org/8.0.html.

  10. http://www.pleoworld.com/pleo_rb/eng/index.php.

  11. More information is available at http://dream2020.eu/.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the participants for making this study possible by completing the survey. We also thank the autism organisations we contacted for their permission and their help in making the questionnaire widely available to their members. We are also grateful for funding received from the European Commission for our FP7 project DREAM (Grant no. 611391).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility, Faculty of Technology, De Montfort University, Gateway House, Leicester, LE1 9BH, UK

    Mark Coeckelbergh

  2. Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

    Cristina Pop, Andreea Peca, Sebastian Pintea & Daniel David

  3. Clinical and Life Span Psychology Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Brussels, Belgium

    Ramona Simut

  4. Robotics and Multibody Mechanics Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Brussels, Belgium

    Bram Vanderborght

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  1. Mark Coeckelbergh
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  2. Cristina Pop
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Correspondence to Mark Coeckelbergh.

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Coeckelbergh, M., Pop, C., Simut, R. et al. A Survey of Expectations About the Role of Robots in Robot-Assisted Therapy for Children with ASD: Ethical Acceptability, Trust, Sociability, Appearance, and Attachment. Sci Eng Ethics 22, 47–65 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-015-9649-x

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