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describe how the acquired knowledge should affect the design
of such robot systems. Specifically, designers should provide a
means to contain the unexpected harms caused by robots
during experimentation (per conditions 4 and 5). For in-
stance, other robot systems could be deployed to eliminate
harming robots or to protect particularly vulnerable individu-
als. Condition 9 regulates how experiments are performed
and specifies the separation of roles.
Conclusions
In this article, we have proposed that robotics can be consid-
ered as an experimental technology to which the ethical
framework proposed in [16] can be applied. In particular,
some of the experiments performed in the field of robotics
have an explorative nature, contrasting with that of tradi-
tional controlled experiments. The main outcome we
observed is that the epistemological role of explorative experi-
ments, which is that of gaining knowledge on the behavior of
the robots in the real world, should be paired with that of
anticipation to answer ethical questions concerning the
impact of robots on society.
A similar issue has been recognized in other related fields,
e.g., Andrew Moore argued that "...today, because of the
opacity of [artificial intelligence (AI)] algorithms, the most
effective way to minimize the risk of unintended outcomes is
through extensive testing..." and that a "...major challenge in
safety and control is building systems that can safely transi-
tion from the 'closed world' of the laboratory into the outside
'open world' where unpredictable things can happen" [9].
Since not all of the details have been worked out in this article
due to space limitations, future work will address the further
refinement of our approach and its application to other fields
that involve consumers (e.g., service and domestic robots).
We maintain that it is worth continuing the investigation of
the intertwined relationships between ethical and epistemo-
logical aspects for assessing the societal impact of autono-
mous technologies.
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0051+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN

Francesco Amigoni, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Labora-
tory, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. E-mail: francesco.amigoni@
polimi.it.
Viola Schiaffonati, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Labora-
tory, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. E-mail: viola.schiaffonati@
polimi.it.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2018