Drones in humanitarian contexts, robot ethics, and the human–robot interaction

Abstract

There are two dominant trends in the humanitarian care of 2019: the 'technologizing of care' and the centrality of the humanitarian principles. The concern, however, is that these two trends may conflict with one another. Faced with the growing use of drones in the humanitarian space there is need for ethical reflection to understand if this technology undermines humanitarian care. In the humanitarian space, few agree over the value of drone deployment; one school of thought believes drones can provide a utility serving those in need while another believes the large scale deployment of drones will exacerbate the already prevalent issues facing humanitarian aid providers. We suggest in this paper that the strength of the humanitarian principles approach to answer questions of aid provision can be complimented by a technology-facing approach, namely that of robot ethics. We have shown that for humanitarian actors we ought to be concerned with the risks of a loss of contextualization and de-skilling. For the beneficiary, we raise three concerns associated with the threat to the principle of humanity for this group: a loss of dignity by reducing human-to-human interactions; a threat to dignity through a lack of informational transparency; and, a threat to dignity by failing to account for the physiological and behavioral impacts of the drone on human actors. Although we acknowledge the obstacles (and dangers) associated with understanding the physiological and behavioral impacts we insist that the moral acceptability and desirability of drones in humanitarian contexts is dependent on the findings from such studies and that tailored ethical guidelines for drone deployment in humanitarian action be created to reflect the results of such studies.

An Ethical Framework for the Design, Development, Implementation, and Assessment of Drones Used in Public Healthcare

“…In the field of robot ethics, there are a variety of reflections on the use of robots in the healthcare space to assess the impact on patient's privacy (Sharkey and Sharkey 2012), human rights (Sharkey and Sharkey 2011), and autonomy (Sparrow 2016). Academics have also addressed the impact of robots on healthcare providers (Vallor 2011; van Wynsberghe and Li 2019) and on the overall care provision, referred to as the care practice (Santoni de Sio and van Wynsberghe 2016;van Wynsberghe 2012van Wynsberghe , 2013avan Wynsberghe , 2016. Moving such reflections forward, it is time to bring this moral framework into the design and development of public healthcare drones-in a way that supports the engineers and designers creating them, and in a way that ensures the timely reflection of ethical issues prior to their ubiquitous use.…”

“…The use of drones in humanitarian contexts is especially enticing in areas with limited infrastructure and challenging terrain (Cawthorne and Cenci 2019 ; Meier et al 2017 ; USAID 2017 ; van Wynsberghe and Comes 2019 ). Future applications of drones in healthcare include delivering items such as blood samples, medications, vaccines, and organs, between healthcare institutions and directly to patients’ homes (Rosser et al 2018 ).…”

“…For example, the CCVSD approach, and more specifically the nature-of-activities approach (Santoni de Sio and van Wynsberghe 2016) can be used to assess the activities drones will perform, and "certain practice-oriented activities in healthcare should arguably be left to humans, but certain (predominantly) goaldirected activities in healthcare can be fulfilled (sometimes even more ethically) with the assistance of a robot" (Santoni de Sio and van Wynsberghe 2016). The ethical framework approach addresses the use of drones in practices where the drone fills an instrumental (goal-directed) need for the doctors and clinicians, and there is no direct interaction with the patient.…”

“…An example is transportation of medical supplies and samples between hospitals. However, if interaction with the patient is required, this task might be best analyzed using CCVSD, and be performed by a human (Santoni de Sio and van Wynsberghe 2016), such as a drone that brings medications directly to a patient at their home. Here, the patient interacts directly with the drone rather than with the caregiver, and there is a risk of devaluing the care practice.…”

Responsible Robotics and Responsibility Attribution

“…Despite the success and efficiency that robots promise to bring, however, there are societal and ethical issues that need to be addressed. For the last 20 years, robot ethicists have flagged some of the ethical concerns related to robots, for example: the dehumanization and de-skilling of care workers, care receivers, and care practices when robots are used in care contexts (Sharkey 2014;Sparrow and Sparrow 2006;Vallor 2011;van Wynsberghe 2012); the loss of contextual learning necessary for understanding the detailed needs of others when robots replace humans in surgical or humanitarian care (van Wynsberghe and Comes 2019;van Wynsberghe and Gastmans 2008); and a risk of deceiving children when using robots in the classroom (Sharkey 2016), to name a few. To exacerbate these issues, there is growing concern regarding private organizations proving themselves unworthy of society's trust by demonstrating a lack of concern for safety, e.g., the fatal crashes of self-driving cars.…”