Should Delivery Robots Intervene if They Witness Civilian or Police Violence? An Exploratory Investigation

Tilly Seassau and Wenxi Wu and Tom Williams and Martim Brandao

IEEE International Conference on Robot-Human Interactive Communication

As public space robots navigate our streets, they are likely to witness various human behavior, including verbal or physical violence. In this paper we investigate whether people believe delivery robots should intervene when they witness violence, and their perceptions of the effectiveness of different conflict de-escalation strategies. We consider multiple types of violence (verbal, physical), sources of violence (civilian, police), and robot designs (wheeled, humanoid), and analyze their relationship with participants’ perceptions. Our analysis is based on two experiments using online questionnaires, investigating the decision to intervene (N=80) and intervention mode (N=100). We show that participants agreed more with human than robot intervention, though they often perceived robots as more effective, and preferred certain strategies, such as filming. Overall, the paper shows the need to investigate whether and when robot intervention in human-human conflict is socially acceptable, to consider police-led violence as a special case of robot de-escalation, and to involve communities that are common victims of violence in the design of public space robots with safety and security capabilities.