Conference papers

Over the past two decades, socially assistive (SARs) or interactive (SIRs) robots have been developed rapidly due to their beneficial uses in elderly care, rehabilitation, and education. Given their multiple embodiments and contexts of use, however, defining what these robots are remains a difficult task, which further challenges understanding which legal safeguards developers need to follow to ensure a safe human-robot interaction (HRI). 

Establishing legislation that adequately frames the issues is complex if these concepts remain confusing. Despite pioneer efforts to characterize what these robots are in international standards and the literature, there is currently no consensus on which legal category they are, and, therefore, related problems are covered unevenly in different pieces of legislation. Following a systematic review, we analyzed 1,359 works (out of 3,446) to clarify definitions, categories, and functionalities of SARs and SIRs to establish a baseline for understanding and regulating these robots. 

The first results show that the ISO 13482:2014 definition of Mobile Service Robots (MSRs), the formal name for SARs, is incompatible with the current literature. Moreover, more consensus on what qualifies as assistive or interactive under this technology is needed to determine the regulation and safeguards to mitigate the issues these robots entail for users

This paper examines the application of anticipatory regulation to service robotics, with personal care robots as a case study. Designed to assist users in non-medical contexts, personal care robots present unique safety and legal challenges and occupy a regulatory gap that existing frameworks for industrial and medical robots fail to address.

Traditional regulatory approaches struggle to keep pace with such advancements, leaving developers grappling with abstract and ill-fitting legal provisions to consider for their designs. Anticipatory regulation—a proactive, iterative framework emphasizing inclusivity, adaptability, and outcome-based standards—offers a dynamic solution that could help bridge service robotics regulatory gaps and ensure safer, more accountable robotic systems.

Physical Assistant Robots (PAR(s)) are increasingly ubiquitous robots that assist humans with various physical tasks, including walking, eating and dressing. However, there is lack of definitional clarity when it comes to PARs, with ambiguity as to how these robots are construed. This results in potential issues for user safety and for manufacturers’ liability. Employing a rapid evidence review, this paper highlights the discrepancies associated with the understanding of PARs in the literature, and shows the lack of consensus regarding the meaning of PARs. 

The preliminary results indicate the wider ramifications that these discrepancies can cause in terms of safety for users and regulatory compliances for manufacturers. The authors conclude by advocating for a clearer understanding of PARs to ensure necessary safeguards, and by outlining how further research will be conducted to this end.