About REELER

REELER explores ethics in robotics, not as a philosophical topic, but as an anthropological inquiry into the people that make robots and the people that are affected by them, and the relational responsibility between them. The project’s research is focused on everyday  practices in robot development, the collaborations that make development possible, and the learning that occurs (or doesn’t occur) in these processes. Through the ‘multi-variation’ approach  (read more The multi-variation approach: Cross-case analysis of ethnographic fieldwork (2019)) the project has explored 11 different robot types in fieldworks in 13 different European countries. Across this variation the REELER project has found that in general robot developers need to work in closer collaboration with an expanded group of affected stakeholders to make responsible robots (read more Policy Recommendations).

The project involves four European partners from the fields of anthropology, learning, robotics, philosophy, and economics, working closely together in a research-driven collaboration between the SSH-RRI and Robotic-ICT communities. The project aims to raise awareness of the human potential in robotics development, with special attention to distributed development, relational responsibility, ethical and societal issues, collaborative learning, and the economic and societal impacts of robotization. These findings are summarized in the publication Perspectives on Robots with ethical guidelines for Human Proximity in robot development, as well as new understandings of users as affected stakeholders, and recommendations for policy makers and robot developers for how to include the voices of these new types of affected stakeholders.