Addiction to Social Robots: A Research Proposal

Abstract

This research proposal aims to attract interest towards a future problem in the design of social robots. Persuasive technologies have demonstrated their effectiveness to negatively impact a user's behavior and generate addictions towards current social technologies. It could be the case that in the future similar persuasive technologies will be implemented in the design of social robots, leading to a recurrence of the negative impacts mentioned above. This research aims to investigate this phenomenon to prevent it and encourage the ethical design of social robots.