Do you remember me? Ethical Issues in Long-term Social Robot Interactions

The paper discusses ethical issues in dialogue engagement to build a long-term trusting relationship between a human and a robot agent over a period of time. Engagement refers not only to frequent interactions but also to recognition of the partner and their non-verbal communication which indicates level of interest, activity, and affective state. In applications related to real-world care-taking and instructional tasks, a robot agent’s ability to recognize human partners and react appropriately can prove crucial for smooth interaction. Recognizing the partner’s face and remembering their individual interactions can contribute positively to the acceptance of social robot applications by enabling adaptation to the user’s needs and building long-term relations. For this purpose, we describe work on short-term and long-term memories in the robot’s dialogue manager, and the use of facial landmark recognition to identify the user.