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WeRobot 2014 Conference Videos

By on April 23, 2014 in Presentations - April 4, Presentations - April 5, Speakers

If you missed WeRobot 2014 or want to enjoy it again, videos of all the speaker sessions are now available for viewing online. We’ve also included links to all the papers below. See the full program for complete lists of authors.

April 4th

Morning

Welcome Remarks with Thomas J. LeBlanc and A. Michael Froomkin

Regulating the Loop: Ironies of Automation Law with Meg Leta Ambrose and Elizabeth Grossman (Read the paper)

Proxy Prudence – Rethinking Models of Responsibility for Semi-autonomous Robots with Jason Millar and Peter Asaro (Read the paper)

Robots as Labor Creating Devices: Robotic Technologies and the Expansion of the Second Shift with Ann Bartow and Jodi Forlizzi (Read the paper)

Afternoon

Panel on Robots and Social Justice, moderated by Kate Darling

April 5th

Morning

Chief Justice John Roberts is a Robot with Ian Kerr, Carissima Mathen and Jack Balkin (Read the paper)

When Robot Eyes Are Watching You: The Law & Policy of Automated Communications Surveillance with Kevin Bankston, Amie Stepanovich and Neil Richards (Read the paper)

Robotics and the New Cyberlaw with Ryan Calo and David G. Post (Read the paper)

Afternoon

A Conservation Theory of Governance for Automated Law Enforcement with Woodrow Hartzog, Lisa A. Shay, and Mary Anne Franks (Read the paper)

Panel on Domestic Drones moderated by Dan Siciliano

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Demonstration: Avi and Sara Rushinek on Automated Algorithmic Software Trading Robots: Sousveillance, and Continuous Cloud Sync Video SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Audit Trails

By on April 3, 2014 in Presentations - April 4, Speakers

Automated Algorithmic Software Trading Robots: Sousveillance, and Continuous Cloud Sync Video SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Audit Trails
Avi Rushinek and Sara Rushinek

Avi Rushinek

Avi Rushinek

In the age of high frequency trading (HFT) through the use of automated algorithmic software trading robots, consolidated audit trails can be the watch dog, monitoring for triggers that may cause massive market fluctuations. Conversely, they can also be spying on other traders in the market place while recording, webcasting, and then recasting the data in order to influence the marketplace.

Sara Rushinek

Sara Rushinek

In their demonstration, Avi and Sara Rushinek will use state of the art hardware and software to show how consolidated audit trails can be used for monitoring purposes – in HFT, general security, spying and content misappropriation- through the use of several commonly available platforms and how, with an internet connection, all the data (text, audio, video) is continuously cloud sync’d, archived, and readily available at the top of search engine search results.

Avi Rushinek and Sara Rushinek will present their Automated Algorithmic Software Trading Robots: Sousveillance, and Continuous Cloud Sync Video SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Audit Trails demonstration on Friday, April 4th at 4:00 PM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

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Discussants and Moderators: Day One – April 4th

By on March 28, 2014 in Presentations - April 4, Sponsors

We Robot 2014 presentations feature Discussants and Moderators who are in integral part of the conference. Discussants are the lead speakers in their session and are responsible for presenting the main themes of the paper and offering their views. Moderators are the ringmasters of their panels.

Elizabeth Grossman

Elizabeth Grossman

Elizabeth Grossman is the We Robot 2014 Discussant for Meg Leta Ambrose’s paper Regulating the Loop: Ironies of Automation Law on Friday, April 4th at 8:45 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Dr. Grossman is a Technology Policy Strategist within the Technology Policy Group at Microsoft Corporation. This group helps identify disruptive and emerging technologies, assesses their implications for Microsoft, and drives focused policy engagements with governments and global institutions. The group’s areas of focus are broad and include applications and implications of intelligent and autonomous systems. Prior to Microsoft, Elizabeth was at Lewis-Burke Associates, the Research Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, and the National Academy of Sciences. Elizabeth received a Bachelor of Arts in Physics and Mathematics from Swarthmore College and a Masters and Ph.D. in Computational Physics from the University of Chicago.

Peter Asaro

Peter Asaro

Peter Asaro is the We Robot 2014 Discussant for Jason Millar’s paper Proxy Prudence – Rethinking Models of Responsibility for Semi-autonomous Robots on Friday, April 4th at 10:15AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Asaro is Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Programs for the School of Media Studies at the New School for Public Engagement in New York City. He is the co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, and has written on lethal robotics from the perspective of just war theory and human rights. Dr. Asaro’s research also examines agency and autonomy, liability and punishment, and privacy and surveillance as it applies to consumer robots, industrial automation, smart buildings, and autonomous vehicles.

Jodi Forlizzi

Jodi Forlizzi

Jodi Forlizzi is the We Robot 2014 Discussant for Ann Bartow’s paper Robots as Labor Creating Devices: Robotic Technologies and the Expansion of the Second Shift on Friday, April 4th at 11:45 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Forlizzi is an interaction designer and researcher with an Associate Professor position in Design and Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Her research ranges from understanding the limits of human attention to understanding how products and services evoke social behavior, and she designs and researches systems ranging from peripheral displays to social and assistive robots and interfaces to control them.

Kate Darling

Kate Darling

Kate Darling is Moderator for the We Robot 2014 presentation Panel on Robots and Social Justice on Friday, April 4th at 2:00 PM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Darling is a Research Specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Yale Information Society Project. After surviving law school, she went on to complete a science doctorate at the ETH Zurich. Her work has covered innovation policy in copyright and patent systems and increasingly focuses on the intersection of law and robotics, with a particular interest in social and ethical issues.

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Provost Thomas J. LeBlanc to Deliver Welcome Remarks

By on March 27, 2014 in Presentations - April 4, Speakers

Executive Vice President and Provost of the University of Miami Thomas J. LeBlanc will deliver the We Robot 2014 Welcome Remarks on Friday, April 4th at 8:30 AM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center.

Thomas J. LeBlanc

Thomas J. LeBlanc

In addition to his duties as Executive Vice President and Provost, LeBlanc is also a professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering. Previously, he served as dean of the college faculty in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at the University of Rochester. His publications include writings on operating systems, parallel programming, and software engineering. He holds a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from State University of New York at Plattsburgh.

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Telerobotics Demonstration with Howard Jay Chizeck

By on March 26, 2014 in Presentations - April 4, Speakers

Telerobotics Demonstration with Howard Jay Chizeck

Howard Jay Chizeck

Howard Jay Chizeck

In this demonstration, some recent advances in telerobots for manipulation will be demonstrated. A telerobot is a robot operated by a human operator, most often from a remote location, through a two way communication link.  Robot surgery devices are telerobots (although the surgeon is nearby). Telerobots can be useful in any situation that is too dangerous for human presence, or too small, or too large or too far away. Telerobots can be used for deep water operations (pollution cleanup, scientific sampling, and resource extraction). They can be used for mine removal or for mining, for firefighting or for human guided tasks in high temperature, chemically hazardous, biohazardous or radioactive situations (such as nuclear reactor cleanup). The robot performs the physical action, but it is directed by a human operator, either completely or with shared autonomy.

Technology permitting (internet connection issues, etc), one arm of a remote surgical robot (in Seattle) will be controlled over an internet link from the conference, with a skype video connection providing viewing of the remote operation. There will also be a short video of very recent results demonstrating the hacking of the control of this surgical robot.

Several short videos of research robots that provide the operator a sense of touch, through the use of haptic rendering (for laser surgery and for underwater manipulation). In addition, a demonstration of this haptic rendering (touching a beating heart) will be available for a ‘hands on’ demonstration.

Howard Jay Chizeck will present the Telerobotics Demonstration on Friday, April 4th at 4:00 PM in the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

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Laurel D. Riek and Don Howard on “A Code of Ethics for the Human-Robot Interaction Profession”

By on March 26, 2014 in Presentations - April 4, Speakers

A Code of Ethics for the Human-Robot Interaction Profession
Laurel D. Riek and Don Howard

Laurel D. Riek

Laurel D. Riek

Don Howard

Don Howard

As robots transition into human social environments, a new range of technical, ethical, and legal challenges are arising. This paper discusses the unique ethical challenges facing HRI practitioners designing robots for these spaces, and proposes a code of ethics for the profession. We argue that the affordance of all rights and protections ordinarily assumed in human-human interactions apply to human-robot interaction, and discuss various social, legal, and design considerations to facilitate this.

Laurel D. Riek and Don Howard will present A Code of Ethics for the Human Robot Interaction Profession on Friday, April 4th at 2:00 PM with moderator Kate Darling on the Panel on Robots and Social Justice at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center.

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Aaron Jay Saiger on “Robots in School: Disability and the Promise (or Spectre?) of Radical Educational Equality”

By on March 24, 2014 in Presentations - April 4, Speakers

Robots in School: Disability and the Promise (or Specter?) of Radical Educational Equality
Aaron Jay Saiger

A recent New York Times story: A nine-year-old South Carolinian named Lexie Kinder, suffering from an immune disorder, is tutored for years at home to avoid infection. Then she is taught to control a VGo, a “camera-and-Internet-enabled robot that swivels around the classroom and streams two-way video between her school and house.” The VGo, dolled up by Lexie in a pink tutu, ends the little girl’s pervasive isolation. Her robot, which looks like a laptop and webcam bolted to a child-height cart, sits at an ordinary school desk, interacts with both teachers and classmates, stands in line for recess, and even is evacuated with its controller’s friends during fire drills.

Aaron Jay Saiger

Aaron Jay Saiger

For any parent of a disabled child — for any parent, really — the slide show that the Times posted to its website to accompany its story grips both mind and heart. Technology, in particular the robot-plus-internet model, seems suddenly to offer real hope of mitigating the many educational disadvantages faced by the disabled. It tantalizingly hints not only at the possibility of genuine equality of educational opportunity for disabled children, but of real social integration to boot. Were I the parent of a child like Lexie, I would be exuberant. I would also would be on the phone to the VGo distributor. Were I the parent of a disabled child whose challenges were different from Lexie’s, I would likely be nearly as enthusiastic, joyously welcoming the possibility of adapting her family’s model to my own child’s needs. The potential of robotic technology to realize these kinds of equality is very real. But this paper argues that, in the context of the legal structures that govern education of the disabled, robotic technology is also deeply threatening. The same robots that can open schoolhouse doors that had been closed to individual children with disabilities can, collectively, work to slam those doors shut for the disabled as a class. The idea of “special” education is that the disabled have special needs that must be protected by a grant of special legal rights. The very ability of robots to satisfy those needs in ways heretofore unimagined has the potential to erode the justifications and the institutions that guarantee special legal rights. This could move disabled children backwards, towards less equal educational opportunity.

Aaron Jay Saiger will present Robots in School: Disability and the Promise (or Specter?) of Radical Educational Equality on Friday, April 4th at 2:00 PM with moderator Kate Darling on the Panel on Robots and Social Justice at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

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Ann Bartow on “Robots as Labor Creating Devices: Robotic Technologies and the Expansion of the Second Shift”

By on March 24, 2014 in Presentations - April 4, Speakers

Robots as Labor Creating Devices: Robotic Technologies and the Expansion of the Second Shift
Ann Bartow

Automation often incompletely replaces human employees in service related positions, and the leftover tasks become the responsibility of the consumer, who is forced into performing ever increasing amounts of self service. For example, ATMs and online banking programs require account holders to perform the tasks that human bank tellers used to undertake for depositors. A bank statement used to arrive regularly in the mail, but now one must track our savings and expenditures online, using complex passwords and secure servers if one wishes to avoid automated bank robbery. A hard copy must be self-printed at home. If one has any unique questions about one’s finances, she must survive a gauntlet of automated phone options to reach a live person.

Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

A different but related consequence of automation is a ratcheting upward of standards. Automation may reduce the labor associated with a task, but there is a new expectation that the task should therefore be performed more often or with elevated results. Housekeeping tasks like floor cleaning can be delegated to robots, but preparing a floor to be cleaned by a robot can require de-cluttering, moving power cords and rearranging furniture. At the end of each robotic floor cleaning session, everything must be put back into place. Because sweeping and vacuuming robots have the capacity to clean continuously, this creates expectations that floors should always be freshly cleaned. While the per episode work input required might be lessened by a robot, any labor savings are likely offset by the increased frequency of the cleanings.

One might assume that when robots can complete tasks that female humans would otherwise have to undertake in the home or on the job, the workload on human women is reduced. This paper challenges that notion, and posits that in some contexts robots actually increase the workloads of the humans they putatively serve, that this trend is significant, and that it has a disproportionately negative impact on women, thereby exacerbating “the second shift,” preexisting gendered work gaps related to housework, child rearing, and caregiving.

Ann Bartow will present Robots as Labor Creating Devices:Robotic Technologies and the Expansion of the Second Shift on Friday, April 4th at 11:45 AM with discussant Jodi Forlizzi at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

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Kris Hauser, Andrew A. Proia, and Drew T. Simshaw on “Consumer Cloud Robotics and the Fair Information Practice Principles: The Policy Risks and Opportunities Ahead”

By on March 20, 2014 in Presentations - April 4, Speakers

Consumer Cloud Robotics and the Fair Information Practice Principles: The Policy Risks and Opportunities Ahead
Kris Hauser, Andrew A. Proia, Drew T. Simshaw

Kris Hauser

Kris Hauser

Rapid technological innovation has made commercially accessible consumer robotics a reality. At the same time, individuals and organizations are turning to “the cloud” for more convenient and cost effective data storage and management. It seemed only inevitable that these two technologies would merge to create “cloud robotics,” described by Google Research Scientist Dr. James Kuffner as “a new approach to robotics that takes advantage of the Internet as a resource for massively parallel computation and sharing of vast data resources.” By making robots lighter, cheaper, and more efficient, cloud robotics could be the catalyst for a mainstream consumer robotics marketplace. However, this new industry would join a host of modern consumer technologies that seem to have rapidly outpaced the legal and regulatory regimes implemented to protect consumers.  Recently, consumer advocates and the tech industry have focused their attention on information privacy and security, and how to establish sufficient safeguards for the collection, retention, and dissemination of personal information while still allowing technologies to flourish.

Drew T. Simshaw

Drew T. Simshaw

Underlying a majority of these proposals, whether it be through legislation or industry self-regulation, are a set of practices, articulated in the 1970s, that address how personal information should be collected, used, retained, managed, and deleted, known as the Fair Information Practice Principles (“FIPPs”).

Andrew A. Proia

Andrew A. Proia

This paper first will provide a brief history of the FIPPs, focusing primarily on their influence in the consumer space. This section will examine how the original FIPPs came into existence and how they have taken shape in the national and international communities. It will also detail three influential variations of the FIPPs which are likely to influence the information privacy and security regulations of cloud robotics in U.S. consumer products. Second, this paper will introduce many within the information law and policy realm to the vastly advancing (yet little known) technology known as cloud robotics. Then, with the help of privacy fellows and roboticists, the paper dissects how each principle, and its relevant variations, will affect the efficiency and interoperability of cloud robotics in the consumer marketplace.

By providing practical observations of how cloud robotics may emerge in a consumer marketplace regulated by the FIPPs, this research will help both the information privacy and robotics fields in beginning to address the policy risks and opportunities ahead.

Andrew A. Proia and Drew T. Simshaw will discuss “Consumer Cloud Robotics and the Fair Information Practice Principles: The Policy Risks and Opportunities Ahead” as part of the Panel on Robots and Social Justice moderated by Kate Darling on Friday, April 4th at 2:00 PM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

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Jason Millar on Proxy Prudence – Rethinking Models of Responsibility for Semi-autonomous Robots

By on March 19, 2014 in Presentations - April 4, Speakers

Proxy Prudence – Rethinking Models of Responsibility for Semi-autonomous Robots
Jason Millar

Jason Millar

Jason Millar

As robots become more autonomous—capable of acting in complex ways, independent of direct human interaction—their actions will challenge traditional notions of responsibility. How, for example, do we sort out responsibility when a self-driving car swerves this way or that in a situation where all possible outcomes lead to harm? This paper explores the question of responsibility from both philosophical and legal perspectives, by examining the relationship between designers, semi-autonomous robots and users. Borrowing concepts from the philosophy of technology, bioethics and law, I argue that in certain use contexts we can reasonably describe a robot as acting as a moral proxy on behalf of a person. In those cases I argue it is important to instantiate the proxy relationship in a morally justifiable way. I examine two questions that are helpful in determining how to appropriately instantiate proxy relationships with semi-autonomous robots, and that we can also ask when attempting to sort out responsibility: 1) On whose behalf was the robot acting?; and 2) On whose behalf ought the robot to have been acting?

Focusing on proxy relationships allows us to shift our focus away from a strictly causal model of responsibility and focus also on a proxy model informed by an ethical analysis of the nature of the designer-artefact-user relationship. By doing so I argue that we gain some traction on problems of responsibility with semi-autonomous robots. I examine two cases to demonstrate how a shift towards a proxy model of responsibility, and away from a strictly causal model of responsibility helps to manage risks and provides a more accurate accounting of responsibility in some use contexts. I offer some suggestions how we might decide whom a robot ought legitimately to be acting on behalf of, while offering some thoughts on what legal and ethical implications my argument carries for designers and users.

Jason Millar will present Proxy Prudence – Rethinking Models of Responsibility for Semi-autonomous Robots on Friday, April 4th at 10:15 AM with discussant Peter Asaro at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

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