Andrew Thaler

They will explain how providing a platform that is accessible to a majority of ocean stakeholder groups and can operate in marine and freshwater systems empowers researchers, citizen scientists, and conservation workers. Underwater robots provide the ability to broadcast discoveries in real time, allowing both greater participation from the general public and more transparency. Low­ cost, open­ source underwater robots, like the OpenROV, are a powerful tool that can fundamentally alter the way people interact with the oceans. The OpenROV 2.8 and OpenROV Trident are among the most capable underwater robots available to consumers. Their open­ source architecture makes the eminently expandable and hackable, presenting a tremendous opportunity to ocean stakeholders with particular needs and a limited budget. Both are capable of diving to 100 meters, are extremely portable, and have a 2 hour+ endurance. For this demonstration, the capabilities of both OpenROVs will be discussed, along with the description of field projects that have successfully used OpenROVs. The legal and ethical issues surrounding the use of small underwater robots (particularly with regard to interactions with marine mammals and in the transport of invasive species) also will be explored.

Trident in water

Andrew Thaler of OpenROV
 and Joey Maier of Polk State will present a demonstration on Openrov and Openrov Trident: Democratizing Exploration, Conservation, and Marine Science Through Low-Cost Open-Source Underwater Robots on Saturday, April 2nd at 1:30 PM at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

All of the We Robot 2016 papers are now available for download from the Program Page — look for the colorful hyperlinks. If you’re coming, or if you are planning to follow along online, you will want to read as many of the papers as you can before the event. We Robot authors do not present their papers; instead we jump straight to the discussant, who summarizes the paper and then offers comments. The author(s) respond briefly, and then we turn it over to our amazing attendees for their questions and reactions. This makes for a much more substantive session, but it works better if you’ve read the paper in advance.

UPDATED: If you would prefer to download the papers all at once, here’s a zip file with all of the papers.
Second Update (3/28): There’s a new draft of the Asaro paper on the Program page, and in the zip file above.
Third Update (3/29): New draft of Gilbert-Zallone article.

William D. Smart

Or do we? How much do legal and policy scholars know about real robots, and the technology that goes into them? How well do roboticists understand the law and how it works? The frank answer to both of these questions is “not as much or as well as they should”.

This paper provides the results of a survey taken at We Robot 2013, designed to assess how well me know each others’ fields of expertise. We Robot participants were invited to answer a set of questions to determine how well they understood the basics of robotics technology and some of the legal issues surrounding it. Participants self-identified as either a roboticist, a legal scholar, a policy scholar, or “other” and gave some basic demographic information. The paper gives an analysis of the results of the survey, highlighting some interesting trends. Without giving the game away, none of us knows as much as we think we do, and there’s still a lot of work to be done to educate each other, and to really understand the basics of each other’s fields. This is, however, vital for the long-term success of both We Robot and the ideas on which it is founded.

In addition to presenting the results of the survey, the paper identifies some key areas where we can make progress in educating each other, and provide some concrete suggestions for how to do this. The ultimate goal of this paper is to scare everyone just a little bit, but then to provide a ray of hope for the future. If we know where our own shortcomings are, we can work to directly address them, and to make sure that, when we are caricaturing our colleagues’ areas of expertise, we are at least 80% right.

William D. Smart will present What do We Really Know About Robots and the Law? on Saturday, April 2nd at 4:30 PM with discussant Ian Kerr at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

Helen Norton

Toni Massaro

Helen Norton and Toni Massaro will present Siriously? Free Speech Rights for Artificial Intelligence on Saturday, April 2nd at 3:15 PM with discussant Margot E. Kaminski at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

Peter Asaro

This paper examines the possible future application of robotics to policing on the assumption that these will be systems that are controlled by programmed computers, rather than cyborgs. In particular, this paper examines the legal and moral requirements for the use of force by police, and whether robotic systems of the foreseeable future could meet these requirements, or whether those laws may need to be revised in light of robotic technologies, as some have argued.

Beyond this, the paper considers the racial dimensions of the use of force by police, and how such automation might impact the discriminatory nature of police violence. Many people believe that technologies are politically neutral, and might expect a future RoboCop to be similarly neutral, and consequently to lack racial prejudice and bias. In this way, RoboCop might be seen as a technological solution to racist policing. Many scholars have argued that technologies embody the values of the society that produces them, and often amplify the power disparities and biases of that society. In this way, RoboCop might be seen as an even more powerful, dangerous and unaccountable embodiment of racist policing.

The paper proceeds by examining the problems of racist policing from a number of diverse perspectives. These include examining the national and international legal standards for the use of force by police, as well as the guidelines issued by UN Human Rights Council, ICRC, and Amnesty International, and the legal implications of designing robotic systems to use violent and lethal force, remotely or autonomously.

From another perspective, the paper will consider the ways in which digital technologies are not racially neutral, but can actually embody forms of racism by design, both intentionally and unintentionally. This includes simple forms such as automatic faucets which fail to recognize dark skinned hands,the intentional tuning of color film stock to give greater dynamic range to white faces at the expense of black faces, and the numerous challenges of adapting facial recognition technologies to racially diverse faces. In other words, how might automated technologies that are intended to treat everyone equal, fail to do so? And further, how might automated technologies be expected to make special considerations for particularly vulnerable populations? The paper also considers the challenges of recognizing individuals in need of special consideration during police encounters, such as the elderly, children, pregnant women, people experiencing health emergencies, the mentally ill, and the physically handicapped including the deaf, blind and those utilizing wheelchairs, canes, prosthetics and other medical aides and devices.

The paper also considers the systemic nature of racism. The automation of policing might fail to address systemic racism, even if it could be successful in eliminating racial bias in individual police encounters. In particular, it considers the likely applications of data-driven policing. Given the efficiency aims of automation, it seems likely that automated patrols would be shaped by data from previous police calls and encounters. As is already the case with human policing, robotic police will likely be deployed more heavily in the communities of racial minorities, and the poor and disenfranchised where they will generate more interactions, more arrests, and thus provide data to further justify greater robotic police presence in those communities. That is, automated policing could easily reproduce the racist effects of existing practices and its explicit and implicit forms of racism.

Finally, the paper reflects on the need for greater community involvement in establishing police use-of-force standards, as well as the enforcement of those standards, and other norms governing policing. Moreover, as policing becomes increasingly automated, through both data-driven and robotic technologies, it is increasingly important to involve communities in the design and adoption of technologies used to keep the peace in those communities. Failing to do so will only further increase an adversarial stance between communities and their police force.

Peter Asaro will present Will #BlackLivesMatter to RoboCop? on Saturday, April 2nd at 3:15 PM with discussant Mary Anne Franks at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

Aaron Mannes

Broadly, the American people will want their government to support research in robotics, regulate robotics, manage robotic crises (such as dangerous autonomous behavior), and help society adapt to the broader changes wrought by robotics. This paper, using the organizational theory and bureaucratic politics paradigms, provides a menu of institutional options for dealing with this emerging technology.

Aaron Mannes will present Institutional Options for Robot Governance on Saturday, April 2nd at 10:00 AM with discussant Harry Surden at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.

Aurelia Tamò

Christoph Lutz

This article addresses the topic of healthcare robots and privacy. The choice of healthcare robots comes from the fact that they often deal with extremely sensitive information and very vulnerable population groups: elderly and/or severely ill individuals. In this sense, they present a “worst case scenario” for privacy, where potential privacy intrusions are especially severe. The authors use actor network theory (ANT) to shed light on the privacy implications of healthcare robots from a specific theoretical point of view. ANT is a descriptive, constructivist approach that takes into account the relationality of technology and the social and the agency of objects, concepts and ideas. It has been applied to complex technological innovations, such as e-health systems. The authors use some of the main concepts of ANT–actants, translations, tokens/quasi-objects, punctualization, obligatory passage point–to “map” the privacy ecosystem in robotic healthcare technology, thereby analyzing the complex interplay of robots and humans in that context.

Aurelia Tamò and Christoph Lutz will present Privacy and healthcare robots – An ANT analysis on Saturday, April 2nd at 8:30 AM with discussant Matt Beane at the University of Miami Newman Alumni Center in Coral Gables, Florida.