Care robots can be understood as service robots and in many cases also as social robots. The talk by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel at Innocare 2023 on 31 August 2023 in the “Careum Auditorium” in Zurich clarified the goals, tasks, and characteristics, presented several prototypes and products and, based on this, made ethical considerations. Service robots can contribute to personal autonomy, but weaken informational autonomy. It is important to design service and social robots in the healthcare sector in such a way that they meet as many requirements and needs as possible and are useful tools for caregivers and those in need of care. Disciplines such as machine ethics can help in this regard. At the end of his presentation, Oliver Bendel discussed the morality module that has been developed in the context of this discipline. It uses a morality menu to influence the behavior of the robot using sliders. The version for care robots (CARE-MOMO) was implemented by Marc Heimann in 2022. The partners of Innocare 2023 were United Robotics Group (URG), Arabesque, Achermann und HPE Aruba Networks (Photo: Nici Jost).
BY OLIVER BENDEL
