Tom N. Coggins

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About

Tom N. Coggins is a critical voice in the ethics of domestic and industrial robotics, exploring how automated systems reshape human labor, privacy, and social norms. His work interrogates the hidden costs of convenience, as seen in his most-cited paper, "More Work for Roomba? Domestic Robots, Housework and the Production of Privacy" (2022, 12 citations), which argues that household robots may paradoxically intensify the privatization of domestic labor rather than liberate users. Coggins further challenges prevailing assumptions in machine ethics with "The Seven Troubles with Norm-Compliant Robots" (2023, 9 citations), exposing how embedding social norms into robots risks reinforcing biases, eroding accountability, and masking systemic inequities. His research extends to industrial contexts, as in "More Than Meets the Eye? Robotisation and Normativity in the Dutch Construction Industry" (2020, 2 citations), where he examines how automation alters professional norms and worker agency. By centering the sociological and ethical dimensions of human-robot interaction, Coggins offers a necessary corrective to techno-optimism, urging researchers to consider whose values robots encode and whose labor they displace. His contributions are vital for students and scholars seeking to build socially responsible robotics.