Culturally Sustainable Social Robotics as an Empowerment Technology

Abstract

The implementation of culturally sustainable social robotics (SR) puts high requirements on the design of social human-robot interaction. This paper proposes the concept of empowerment technology (ET) as a value-driven framework for advancing the interlocking of human values and computational modeling. A capability-based model of the interactive unity of humans and robots is introduced and applied to a robotic childcare system. This case study shows that culturally sustainable SR in terms of ET is possible if SR addresses the values held by local stakeholders and ensures the support of human empowerment in terms of these values.