Accountability in Mobile Service Robots

摘要

Service robots sometimes behave in unexpected ways and may put economic interests or human safety in risk. This can be accepted in research environments, but it is not going to be tolerated in everyday use of robots. In addition, regulations for the deployment of autonomous robots (from home assistants to autonomous cars) are increasing. These regulations will require at some point systems that could be audited and that implement facilities for forensic analysis. In this paper, we propose that these systems have to be integrated in the development frameworks of robotics software as a mandatory component. We present two design alternatives for the de facto standard for service robotics (ROS: Robotic Operating System) to enforce safety and security rules based on a customizable black-box-like component.