The ICSR is one of the leading conferences for social robotics worldwide. The 17th edition will take place from 10 to 12 September 2025 in Naples, Italy. The conference website is now online: icsr2025.eu. „The conference theme, ‘Emotivation at the Core: Empowering Social Robots to Inspire and Connect,’ highlights the essential role of ‘Emotivation’ in social robotics. Emotivation captures the synergy between emotion and motivation, where emotions trigger and sustain motivation during interactions. In social robotics, this concept is key to building trust, fostering empathy, and supporting decision-making by enabling robots to respond sensitively to human emotions, inspiring engagement and action.“ (Website ICSR) The most important conferences dates are: Full Paper Submission: March 28th, 2025; Full Paper Notification: May 9th, 2025; Camera-ready: June 30th, 2025; Paper Presentation Days at ICSR’25: September 11th and 12th, 2025. All dates are also listed on the website. Participants will meet for two days at the Parthenope University of Naples and for the third day at the Città della Scienza conference center. All buildings and rooms are also listed on the website. Be part of this excellent conference (Photo: ICSR)!
ACM Designing Interactive Systems 2024 (DIS 2024) will be held from 1-5 July 2024 at IT University, Copenhagen, Denmark. The Call for Papers for the Creative Robotics Theatre workshop is open to workshop papers, videos, pictorials, design explorations and performances. The roboticist and artist Hooman Samani is one of the organizers. He calls for participation on his website: „Join us at DIS 2024 for an innovative workshop exploring the confluence of robotics, theatre, and societal change. We are seeking artists, technologists, researchers, and practitioners interested in pushing the boundaries of Creative Robotics Theatre to enhance societal well-being and address global challenges.“ (Website Hooman Samani) Topics of interest include creative robotics theatre, robotics performance, embodied and tangible interfaces and performances, and performance with embodied objects. The deadline for submissions is 15 May 2024. Further information on the workshop is available at hoomansamani.com.
From March 27-29, 2023, the AAAI 2023 Spring Symposia featured the symposium „Socially Responsible AI for Well-being“ by Takashi Kido (Teikyo University, Japan) and Keiki Takadama (The University of Electro-Communications, Japan). This time the venue was exceptionally not Stanford University, but the Hyatt Regency SFO Airport. On March 28, Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel presented the paper „Increasing Well-being through Robotic Hugs“, written by himself, Andrea Puljic, Robin Heiz, Furkan Tömen, and Ivan De Paola. It has now been published and can be downloaded via ceur-ws.org/Vol-3527/. From the abstract: „This paper addresses the question of how to increase the acceptability of a robot hug and whether such a hug contributes to well-being. It combines the lead author’s own research with pioneering research by Alexis E. Block and Katherine J. Kuchenbecker. First, the basics of this area are laid out with particular attention to the work of the two scientists. The authors then present HUGGIE Project I, which largely consisted of an online survey with nearly 300 participants, followed by HUGGIE Project II, which involved building a hugging robot and testing it on 136 people. At the end, the results are linked to current research by Block and Kuchenbecker, who have equipped their hugging robot with artificial intelligence to better respond to the needs of subjects.“ More information on the conference via aaai.org/conference/spring-symposia/sss23/.
On 24 October 2020 the article „Love Dolls and Sex Robots in Unproven and Unexplored Fields of Application“ by Oliver Bendel was published in Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics. From the Abstract: „Love dolls, the successors of blow-up dolls, are widespread. They can be ordered online or bought in sex shops and can be found in brothels and households. Sex robots are also on the rise. Research, however, has been slow to address this topic thoroughly. Often, it does not differentiate between users and areas of application, remaining vague, especially in the humanities and social sciences. The present contribution deals with the idea and history of love dolls and sex robots. Against this background, it identifies areas of application that have not been investigated or have hardly been investigated at all. These include prisons, the military, monasteries and seminaries, science, art and design as well as the gamer scene. There is, at least, some relevant research about the application of these artefacts in nursing and retirement homes and as such, these will be given priority. The use of love dolls and sex robots in all these fields is outlined, special features are discussed, and initial ethical, legal and pragmatic considerations are made. It becomes clear that artificial love servants can create added value, but that their use must be carefully considered and prepared. In some cases, their use may even be counterproductive.“ The article is available here for free as an open access publication.
In his lecture at the Orient-Institut Istanbul on 18 December 2019, Oliver Bendel dealt with care robots as well as therapy and surgery robots. He presented well-known and less known examples and clarified the goals, tasks and characteristics of these service robots in the healthcare sector. Afterwards he investigates current and future functions of care robots, including sexual assistance functions. Against this background, the lecture considered both the perspective of information ethics and machine ethics. In the end, it became clear which robot types and prototypes or products are available in healthcare, which purposes they fulfil, which functions they assume, how the healthcare system changes through their use and which implications and consequences this has for the individual and society. The lecture took place within the series „Human, medicine and society: past, present and future encounters“ … The Orient-Institut Istanbul is a turkological and regional scientific research institute in the association of the Max Weber Foundation. In close cooperation with Turkish and international scientists, it dedicates itself to a multitude of different research areas. More information via www.oiist.org.
In 2018, Paladyn Journal of Behavioral Robotics published several articles on robot and machine ethics. In a message to the authors, the editors noted: „Our special attention in recent months has been paid to ethical and moral issues that seem to be of daily debate of researchers from different disciplines.“ The current issue „Roboethics“ includes the articles „Towards animal-friendly machines“ by Oliver Bendel, „Liability for autonomous and artificially intelligent robots“ by Woodrow Barfield, „Corporantia: Is moral consciousness above individual brains/robots?“ by Christopher Charles Santos-Lang, „The soldier’s tolerance for autonomous systems“ by Jai Galliott and „GenEth: a general ethical dilemma analyzer“ by Michael Anderson and Susan Leigh Anderson. The following articles will be published in December 2019: „Autonomy in surgical robots and its meaningful human control“ by Fanny Ficuciello, Guglielmo Tamburrini, Alberto Arezzo, Luigi Villani, and Bruno Siciliano, and „AI for the Common Good?! Pitfalls, challenges, and Ethics Pen-Testing“ by Bettina Berendt. More information via www.degruyter.com.
The young discipline of machine ethics refers to the morality of semi-autonomous and autonomous machines, robots, bots or software systems. They become special moral agents, and depending on their behavior, we can call them moral or immoral machines. They decide and act in situations where they are left to their own devices, either by following pre-defined rules or by comparing their current situations to case models, or as machines capable of learning and deriving rules. Moral machines have been known for some years, at least as simulations and prototypes. Machine ethics works closely with artificial intelligence and robotics. The term of machine morality can be used similarly to the term of artificial intelligence. Oliver Bendel has developed a graphic that illustrates the relationship between machine ethics and artificial intelligence. He presented it at conferences at Stanford University (AAAI Spring Symposia), in Fort Lauderdale (ISAIM) and Vienna (Robophilosophy) in 2018.
Fig.: The terms of machine ethics and artificial intelligence
The Digital Europe Working Group Conference Robotics will take place on 8 November 2017 at the European Parliament in Brussels. The keynote address will be given by Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Digital Society and Economy. The speakers of the first panel are Oliver Bendel (Professor of Information Systems, Information Ethics and Machine Ethics at the School of Business FHNW, via video conference), Anna Byhovskaya (policy and communications advisor, Trade Union Advisory Council of the OECD) and Malcolm James (Senior Lecturer in Accounting & Taxation, Cardiff Metropolitan University). The third panel will be moderated by Mady Delvaux (Member of the European Parliament). Speaker is Giovanni Sartor (Professor of Legal Informatics and Legal Theory at the European University Institute). The poster can be downloaded here. Further information is available at www.socialistsanddemocrats.eu/events/sd-group-digital-europe-working-group-robotics.
The conference „Robophilosophy 2018 – Envisioning Robots In Society: Politics, Power, And Public Space“ will take place in Vienna (February 14 – 17, 2018). According to the website, it has three main aims; it shall present interdisciplinary humanities research „in and on social robotics that can inform policy making and political agendas, critically and constructively“, investigate „how academia and the private sector can work hand in hand to assess benefits and risks of future production formats and employment conditions“ and explore how research in the humanities, including art and art research, in the social and human sciences, „can contribute to imagining and envisioning the potentials of future social interactions in the public space“ (Website Robophilosophy). Plenary speakers are Joanna Bryson (Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, UK), Alan Winfield (FET – Engineering, Design and Mathematics, University of the West of England, UK) and Catelijne Muller (Rapporteur on Artificial Intelligence, European Economic and Social Committee). Deadline for submission of abstracts for papers and posters is October 31. More information via conferences.au.dk/robo-philosophy/.
EU rules for the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, to settle issues such as compliance with ethical standards and liability for accidents involving self-driving cars, should be put forward by the EU Commission, urged the Legal Affairs Committee on January 12, 2017. The media has reported on this in television, radio and newspapers. According to the Parliament’s website, rapporteur Mady Delvaux said: „A growing number of areas of our daily lives are increasingly affected by robotics. In order to address this reality and to ensure that robots are and will remain in the service of humans, we urgently need to create a robust European legal framework.“ (Website European Parliament) The members of the European Parliament push „the Commission to consider creating a European agency for robotics and artificial intelligence to supply public authorities with technical, ethical and regulatory expertise“ (Website European Parliament). „They also propose a voluntary ethical conduct code to regulate who would be accountable for the social, environmental and human health impacts of robotics and ensure that they operate in accordance with legal, safety and ethical standards.“ (Website European Parliament) To be more concrete, roboticists could include „kill“ switches so that robots can be turned off in emergencies. This poses questions about, for example, which robots should be enhanced, and which persons should be able to „kill“ them. More information via www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/20170110IPR57613/robots-legal-affairs-committee-calls-for-eu-wide-rules.
„Artificial intelligence (AI) raises a number of ethical and political challenges in the present and near term, with applications such as driverless cars and search engines and potential issues ranging from job disruption to privacy violations. Over a longer term, if AI becomes as or more intelligent than humans, other governance issues such as safety and control may increase in importance. What policy approaches make sense across different issues and timeframes?“ (Website European Parliament) These are the initial words of a description of the workshop „Robotics and Artificial Intelligence – Ethical Issues and Regulatory approach“, organised by the Policy Department of the European Parliament. The first part „will focus on basic ethical and policy questions raised by the development of robotics and AI on the basis of presentations by experts“ (Website European Parliament). According to the description, this will be followed by a discussion with national parliamentarians on what the legislator should do and on which level, with the European Parliament’s draft legislative initiative report on „Civil Law Rules on Robotics“ as a basis. Further information can be found on the European Parliament’s website (www.europarl.europa.eu).
Prior to the hearing in the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany on 22 June 2016 from 4 – 6 pm, the contracted experts had sent their written comments on ethical and legal issues with respect to the use of robots and artificial intelligence. The video for the hearing can be accessed via www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2016/kw25-pa-digitale-agenda/427996. The documents of Oliver Bendel (School of Business FHNW), Eric Hilgendorf (University of Würzburg), Norbert Elkman (Fraunhofer IPK) and Ryan Calo (University of Washington) were published in July on the website of the German Bundestag. Answering the question „Apart from legal questions, for example concerning responsibility and liability, where will ethical questions, in particular, also arise with regard to the use of artificial intelligence or as a result of the aggregation of information and algorithms?“ the US scientist explained: „Robots and artificial intelligence raise just as many ethical questions as legal ones. We might ask, for instance, what sorts of activities we can ethically outsource to machines. Does Germany want to be a society that relegates the use of force, the education of children, or eldercare to robots? There are also serious challenges around the use of artificial intelligence to make material decisions about citizens in terms of minimizing bias and providing for transparency and accountability – issues already recognized to an extent by the EU Data Directive.“ (Website German Bundestag) All documents (most of them in German) are available via www.bundestag.de/bundestag/ausschuesse18/a23/anhoerungen/fachgespraech/428268.
Der Artikel „Die Industrie 4.0 aus ethischer Sicht“ ist am 23. Juli 2015 in der Zeitschrift HMD – Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik erschienen, als „Online-First“-Artikel auf SpringerLink. Die deutsche Zusammenfassung: „Der vorliegende Beitrag arbeitet die wesentlichen Merkmale der Industrie 4.0 heraus und setzt sie ins Verhältnis zur Ethik. Es interessieren vor allem Bereichsethiken wie Informations-, Technik- und Wirtschaftsethik. Am Rande wird auf die Maschinenethik eingegangen, im Zusammenhang mit der sozialen Robotik. Es zeigt sich, dass die Industrie 4.0 neben ihren Chancen, die u. a. ökonomische und technische Aspekte betreffen, auch Risiken beinhaltet, denen rechtzeitig in Wort und Tat begegnet werden muss.“ Das englische Abstract: „This article highlights the essential features of the industry 4.0 and puts them in relation to ethics. Of special interest are the fields of applied ethics such as information, technology and business ethics. Machine ethics is mentioned in passing in connection with social robotics. It is evident that the industry 4.0 in addition to opportunities, affecting among other things economic and technical aspects, includes also risks which must be addressed in word and deed in a timely manner.“ Weitere Informationen über link.springer.com/article/10.1365/s40702-015-0163-z.
Am 14. Februar 2014 startet der MOOC „Autonomous Mobile Robots: Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots – basic concepts and algorithms for locomotion, perception, and intelligent navigation“. In der Beschreibung auf der Website heißt es: „Robots are rapidly evolving from factory workhorses, which are physically bound to their work-cells, to increasingly complex machines capable of performing challenging tasks in our daily environment. The objective of this course is to provide the basic concepts and algorithms required to develop mobile robots that act autonomously in complex environments. The main emphasis is put on mobile robot locomotion and kinematics, environment perception, probabilistic map based localization and mapping, and motion planning.“ Der Kurs wird u.a. von Prof. Dr. Roland Siegwart, Dr. Paul Furgale und Dr. Margarita Chli geleitet. Er dauert 15 Wochen, bei einer Arbeitsbelastung von fünf Stunden pro Woche. Ob auch auf Maschinen- oder Roboterethik eingegangen wird, ist nicht bekannt.
