Abstract
The field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is progressively maturing into a distinct discipline with its own research practices and traditions. Aiming to support this development, we analyzed how ethical conduct was reported and discussed in HRI research involving human participants. A literature study of 73 papers from three major HRI publication outlets was performed. The analysis considered how often the following five principles of ethical conduct were reported: ethical board approval, informed consent, data protection and privacy, deception, and debriefing. These five principles were selected as they belong to all major and relevant ethical guidelines for the HRI field. The results show that overall, ethical conduct is rarely reported, with four out of five principles mentioned in less than one third of all papers. The most frequently mentioned aspect was informed consent, which was reported in 49% of the articles. In this work, we aim to stimulate increased acknowledgment and discussion of ethical conduct reporting within the HRI field.
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Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Oskar MacGregor for his valuable insight on proper ethical conduct. We would also like to thank Erik Lagerstedt and Kajsa Nalin for their support and help on parts of the analysis of the literature study.
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Rosén, J., Lindblom, J., Billing, E. (2021). Reporting of Ethical Conduct in Human-Robot Interaction Research. In: Zallio, M., Raymundo Ibañez, C., Hernandez, J.H. (eds) Advances in Human Factors in Robots, Unmanned Systems and Cybersecurity. AHFE 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 268. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79997-7_11
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