Low-Moral Actions in Avatar Robots

In (Shaheen et al., 2024), we created a list of what low-moral actions were possible through avatar robots when operated by someone malicious and anonymous. We also suggested prevention mechanisms.

Avatar Robots

Imagine a world where people use robots to visit different places and countries. Unlike screens on wheels (telepresence robots), avatar robots can look like anything (think Surrogates, the movie).

Robovie
Avatar Robot

Engkey
Avatar Robot

Orihime
Avatar Robot

Double 3
Telepresence Robot

Anonymity and Low-Moral Actions

One flaw of this is that it is not readily apparent to bystanders who the operator of the robot is. Malicious operators can use this anonymity to do low-moral actions, which we define as not only illegal acts but also acts that violate norms of society.

Risk Analysis Workshops

We conducted three hazard identification workshops with a total of 12 participants (6 male, 6 female) to brainstorm possible low-moral actions. Participants first experienced avatar robots by operating a real robot, a simulated avatar, and sharing space with an avatar robot. Activities included tasks like navigating through simulated environments such as shopping malls and convenience stores, where participants acted as malicious operators. This experience phase was critical for ideation, ensuring that participants understood the technology and its potential for misuse. At the end, participants brainstormed ideas of what low-moral actions are possible when an avatar robot is limited to locomotor movement and video feed from the robot’s eyes to the operator only.

Participants in an activity that simulates an art or poster exhibition. The video shows one participant being forced to change their position by the avatar operated by another participant from a separate room.

Following are examples of the participants doing low-moral acts in simulations. The top-down view was hidden from the participants. They only saw from the Robot’s point-of-view.

Robot inhibits movement of the crowd in a big clothing store.

Robot inhibits movement of an individual in a large hall in a mall.

Results

Through these workshops, we identified four main categories of low-moral actions:

Violate Privacy and Security
Actions such as eavesdropping or entering forbidden spaces.

Inhibit
Blocking access to resources or obstructing movement.

Annoy
Actions like unnatural movement or invading personal space.

Destroy or Hurt
Causing physical harm to individuals or damage to property.

Each category was further divided into subcategories, resulting in a comprehensive list of potential actions and their manifestations. We also suggested prevention mechanisms that were applicable for each category.

Acknlowledgements

This research was conducted during my master’s studies at the Human-Robot Interaction Lab at Kyoto University. It was made possible via the MEXT Scholarship and was supported by JST Moonshot R&D under Grant Number JPMJMS2011, Japan.

🏆 Award

I was awarded the Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award for this work.

Avatar robots allow a teleoperator to interact with the people and environment of a remote place. Malicious operators can use this technology to perpetrate malicious or low-moral actions. In this study, we used hazard identification workshops to identify low-moral actions that are possible through the locomotor movement, cameras, and microphones of an avatar robot. We conducted three workshops, each with four potential future users of avatars, to brainstorm possible low-moral actions. As avatars are not yet widespread, we gave participants experience with this technology by having them control both a simulated avatar and a real avatar as a malicious anonymous operator in a variety of situations. They also experienced sharing space with an avatar controlled by a malicious anonymous operator. We categorized the ideas generated from the workshops using affinity diagram analysis and identified four major categories: violate privacy and security, inhibit, annoy, and destroy or hurt. We also identified subcategories for each. In the second half of this study, we discuss all low-moral action subcategories in terms of their detection, mitigation, and prevention by studying literature from autonomous, social, teleoperated, and telepresence robots as well as other fields where relevant.