Evaulating Human Response to Robot-Administered Punishment
Open Access
- Author:
- Jois, Himavath
- Area of Honors:
- Aerospace Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Alan Richard Wagner, Thesis Supervisor
Robert G. Melton, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- human-robot interaction
ethics
roboethics
authority
punishment
exoskeleton - Abstract:
- Autonomous robots are being developed to serve in various societal roles that may require them to be in a position of social authority to humans. This thesis focuses on robots that serve in the “authority by command” role. Humans placed in a similar position maintain this role through the threat and administration of punishment to subordinates for transgressions, and it is therefore expected that authoritative robots placed in this role would similarly need to mete out punishments to maintain their authority. This thesis presents two exploratory studies that examine a human’s response to a robot that punishes them for transgressions. In the first experiment, human participants were tasked with sorting colored items under time pressure while wearing and interacting with a robotic exoskeleton. The robotic exoskeleton was given authority to autonomously punish participants for mistakes during the task but also could be controlled externally by a human researcher. The second experiment reassesses human response to an authoritative robot in a virtual environment. The performance of participants on the given task, as well as their perception of the robot or human punishing agent was recorded and analyzed. Results indicate that humans tend to comply less with punishments from a robot as opposed to from a fellow human, which suggests that a human may not afford a robot the social authority necessary to administer punishments. These findings are intended to inform the conduct of future studies on authoritative robots and promote discussion of the ethical ramifications of robot-administered punishment.