English

An Ethical Black Box for Social Robots: a draft Open Standard

Robotics 2022-05-16 v1

Abstract

This paper introduces a draft open standard for the robot equivalent of an aircraft flight data recorder, which we call an ethical black box. This is a device, or software module, capable of securely recording operational data (sensor, actuator and control decisions) for a social robot, in order to support the investigation of accidents or near-miss incidents. The open standard, presented as an annex to this paper, is offered as a first draft for discussion within the robot ethics community. Our intention is to publish further drafts following feedback, in the hope that the standard will become a useful reference for social robot designers, operators and robot accident/incident investigators.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2205.06564,
  title  = {An Ethical Black Box for Social Robots: a draft Open Standard},
  author = {Alan F. T. Winfield and Anouk van Maris and Pericle Salvini and Marina Jirotka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.06564},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Submitted to the International Conference on Robot Ethics and Standards (ICRES 2022)

R2 v1 2026-06-24T11:16:24.630Z