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Designing Commercial Therapeutic Robots for Privacy Preserving Systems and Ethical Research Practices Within the Home

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Abstract

The migration of robots from the laboratory into sensitive home settings as commercially available therapeutic agents represents a significant transition for information privacy and ethical imperatives. We present new privacy paradigms and apply the fair information practices (FIPs) to investigate concerns unique to the placement of therapeutic robots in private home contexts. We then explore the importance and utility of research ethics as operationalized by existing human subjects research frameworks to guide the consideration of therapeutic robotic users—a step vital to the continued research and development of these platforms. Together, privacy and research ethics frameworks provide two complementary approaches to protect users and ensure responsible yet robust information sharing for technology development. We make recommendations for the implementation of these principles—paying particular attention to specific principles that apply to vulnerable individuals (i.e., children, disabled, or elderly persons)—to promote the adoption and continued improvement of long-term, responsible, and research-enabled robotics in private settings.

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Notes

  1. Similar discussions of privacy implications from smart devices in the home can be seen with regard to Mattel’s “Hello Barbie” [21] and Samsung’s “Smart TV” [34].

  2. An exception would be if a private company receives federal grant money to fund a study, but even academic collaborations often do not trigger Institutional Review Board (IRB) oversight. Some companies have private ethical review practices or private IRBs, but these actions are not regulated or standardized.

  3. The Belmont Report refers to vulnerable populations as those that “either have limited capacities to consent, have subordinate relationships to the investigator or his institutions...or—by virtue of other aspects of their life—are especially vulnerable.” The Report goes on to specify that those with “limited capacities to consent” include children, fetuses, prisoners, mentally institutionalized, those under the influences of addiction, or those otherwise vulnerable as a consequence of their life situations (for example, those legally enfranchised to grant consent but are in reality incapable of sufficient comprehension, persons with prolonged illness) [36].

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Hewlett Foundation through the UC Berkeley Center for Long- Term Cybersecurity (CLTC). The authors would also like to acknowledge the reviewers for their valuable feedback.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BioSENSE Lab, School of Information, UC Berkeley, 102 South Hall #4600, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Elaine Sedenberg, John Chuang & Deirdre Mulligan

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  1. Elaine Sedenberg
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  2. John Chuang
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  3. Deirdre Mulligan
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Correspondence to Elaine Sedenberg.

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Sedenberg, E., Chuang, J. & Mulligan, D. Designing Commercial Therapeutic Robots for Privacy Preserving Systems and Ethical Research Practices Within the Home. Int J of Soc Robotics 8, 575–587 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-016-0362-y

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