Categorizing Social Robots with Respect to Dimensions Relevant to Ethical, Social and Legal Implications

The aim of this paper is to suggest a framework for categorizing social robots with respect to four dimensions relevant to an ethical, legal and social evaluation. We argue that by categorizing them thusly, we can circumvent problematic evaluations of social robots that are often based on overly broad and abstract considerations. Instead of questioning, for example, whether social robots are ethically good or bad in general, we instead propose that different configurations of (and combinations thereof) the suggested dimensions entail different paradigmatic challenges with respect to ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI). We therefore encourage practitioners to consider these paradigmatic challenges when designing social robots to find creative design solutions. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2020.