IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 56

possessing their own personality features. ''However,
we stand on the verge of a great change in robotic
capabilities that will justify, given the exponential progress forecasted by Moore's Law, a change in our perception about robots and their individual motive force;
At that juncture, the issue of trust in technological systems will be as influential in social development as it is
in our own human-human relationships'' (Epley et al.,
Moravec, cited in [17]). The level of trust in social robots
would be particularly critical in RET and diagnosis of
ASD, since trust would affect the willingness of therapists, teachers, and caregivers to accept robot-produced information and follow the data and indications
provided by robots.
On the other hand, Arras and Cerqui [2] performed a
large scale survey in Switzerland investigating questions
related to the image of robotics, the potential acceptance of robots in daily life, and appearance preferences. The results indicate a high acceptance rate for
robots that share physical and psychological space with
humans, named personal robots, with 71% yes-votes.
Regarding the use of robots in healthcare, 83% of the
respondents declared they would accept a robot to help
them partially regain their independence in case they
cannot handle the tasks of daily life anymore (i.e., due
to age or handicap).
Costescu and David [7] developed a survey in order
to investigate the attitudes of children and adults
toward using social robots in mental health services.
Considering the effectiveness in children's psychotherapy, 54.2% of the parents agreed that social robots
could enhance the therapeutic process and also the
psycho-diagnosis process. When it comes to using
social robots to take care of the children, 37.4% of the
participants disagree, while 33% nether disagree nor
agree, and only 29.2% agree.
These results reveal an ambivalent attitude towards
social robots. While social robots are considered beneficial for the effectiveness of the therapy as long as they
are used as assistive tools for the therapist, there seems
to be a concern regarding the use of social robots in the
absence of the therapist.
The difference in results may also be partially due to
the target audience of the survey. While the Eurobarometer included 26 751 participants from 27 EU countries, a
representative sample of participants for all social groups,
the survey of Arras and Cerqui was completed by 2000
visitors to the "Robotics" pavilion at the Swiss National Exhibition. Furthermore, the sample of participants who completed the Arras and Cerqui survey was overrepresented by
participants who had higher levels of education, younger
age, and were more interested in science, features that
are associated with a higher acceptance of technology
[29]. Therefore, more research should be conducted in

56

order to clarify people's attitudes towards using robots in
healthcare, and more specifically, in physical and psychological recovery processes.

Studies Investigating Ethical Issues
of Using SAR in ASD
There has been theoretical work on ethical challenges
in SAR, including ethical issues raised by working with
autistic children [13], [30]. However, further research
should investigate the underlying reasons whereupon
potential users decide to accept robots [9]. Therefore
there is a great need to perform ethical appraisal studies about robot's acceptance by direct users, caregivers, therapists, and so on. A review of the existing
literature reveals surveys about using robots in care,
but most of them are about physical therapy [4], [20],
[22]. Furthermore, the surveys performed on caregivers of children with autism investigate issues related to
robotic design [20], [24], and not ethical issues. To our
knowledge, no prior survey has specifically investigated ethical issues related to using RET with children
with ASD.

Goal of the Present Study
This article examines the ethical challenges of socially
assistive robotics. It investigates whether people believe it
is ethically acceptable to use robots as assistive tools for
children with ASD; whether they think it's acceptable to
use robots to monitor and record child behaviors and
facilitate the diagnosis process; whether they consider it
to be ethically acceptable that children form bonding relationships with social robots; whether they consider it ethically acceptable to design robots with a human or
non-human appearance. We examine whether age, gender, education, previous experience with robots, or
involvement with persons with autism spectrum disorder
influences people's attitudes about the use of robots in
RET. Unless these questions are addressed, robots cannot
be developed and implemented for RET in an ethically
responsible way, and policy makers will have too little
information about how robots are perceived by people,
and so will not be able to deal with ethical issues related
to those perceptions [6].

Methodology
The survey was developed by a multidisciplinary team
consisting of psychologists, therapists, engineers, and
ethicists, and it was approved by the Ethical Commission from Twente University, The Netherlands. Participants were recruited based on databases of persons
involved in past research, and messages were posted
on relevant blogs, Facebook, newsletters, and websites
of autism organizations from Romania, Belgium, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and U.S.A. There were no

IEEE TEchnology and SocIETy MagazInE

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june 2016



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