Socially Cognizant Robotics for a Technology Enhanced Society

Applications of robotics (such as telepresence, transportation, elder-care, remote health care, cleaning, warehouse logistics, and delivery) are bringing significant changes in individuals' lives and are having profound social impact. Despite the envisioned potential of robotics, the goal of ubiquitous robot assistants augmenting quality of life (and quality of work life) has not yet been realized. Key challenges lie in the complexities of four overarching human-centric objectives that such systems must aim for: 1) improving quality of life of people, especially marginalized communities; 2) anticipating and mitigating unintended negative consequences of technological development; 3) enabling robots to adapt to the desires and needs of human counterparts; 4) respecting the need for human autonomy and agency. Pursuing these objectives requires an integrated cohort of technologists, behavioral scientists and social scientists with a shared vision to pursue a deep, multidisciplinary understanding of how robots interact with individuals and society. We introduce a new term, socially cognizant robotics, to describe this multi-faceted interdisciplinary branch of technology. The emerging practitioner, the socially cognizant roboticist, represents the convergence of socially aware technologists, who can develop intelligent devices that adapt to human and social behavior; and technology-aware social scientists and policymakers, who can translate studies of robotics' social effects into actionable and technically-viable principles and policies. A primary element of socially cognizant robotics is a deliberate "invitation to the table" for social scientists, who bring analytical perspectives and methods that are not typically present in robotics. These perspectives cover two levels of human-technology interaction that we view as essential: the human-robot dyad (Section 2) and the robot-society dyad (Section 3). Figure 1 illustrates how these levels might operate in the context of the workplace and everyday life.