In recent years, service robots has emerged as a new type of technology that falls outside any well-known legal category such as machinery, medical devices, or toys. Socially assistive robots (SAR) interact with humans socially and, therefore, policymakers and robot developers alike encounter challenges in assimilating and establishing legal considerations and frameworks that show clear boundaries for their design and struggle to ensure the safety of those robots.

Consequently, there exists a potential for robots to pose unexpected harm, both physical and cognitive, to the users. Insofar, a comprehensive report explicitly delineating the regulatory gaps and legal inconsistencies for these types of robots is currently lacking. Moreover, there is a lack of scientific evidence supporting policy change in the realm of socially assistive robotics.

This research project will personalize policy interventions concerning SARs, to provide a comprehensive process and assessments for evaluating new socially assistive robot impacts, and to facilitate legal compliance and market entry. This integration will occur within robot testing zones with evidence-based qualitative methods (i.e., robot experimentation), which will generate policy-relevant data that can support policy change.