Resilient strategies for socially compliant autonomous assistive dressing robots

Abstract

Developing resilient autonomous systems requires an interdisciplinary approach that can understand performance variability and respond to critical events when they occur. Resilience within autonomous systems must also account for social norms as well as broader ethical and legal considerations. Within this paper we outline the importance of embedding Social, Legal, Ethical, Empathetic and Cultural (SLEEC) constraints within the development of future autonomous systems. A novel methodological approach is presented that combines Human Factors methods with Computer Science techniques to generate the environmental and situational requirements in combination with a computer rule-based requirements language. This approach also provides a possible structure for capturing contextual and situational information from key stakeholders in the development of autonomous systems. This structure will enable engagement with the stakeholders with respect to key elements identified from this interdisciplinary approach in a responsible way to ensure that future autonomous systems are user centred. The approach is domain independent, but it is applied here to the case of an autonomous assistive dressing robot that aids a user in a dressing task, with a specific critical event that requires a SLEEC resilient response