Should you trust your robot vacuum cleaner?

Dr Kate Darling, a leading specialist in robot ethics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studies the psychology of how humans interact with robots and believes it's important to consider such issues. On a recent visit to Australia she noted: "Robotics is really important right now. Robots are moving from behind the scenes in factories in cages and to new areas of the world, to transportation systems and hospitals and households, and starting to interact with people in a way we haven't seen before. "There are a lot of uses that concern me and other people working in robot ethics. It might be cool to have a robot vacuum cleaner but it might be collecting a lot of data about your home as they get smarter."