(Re-)Thinking Who, What and How in HRI

Interaction design is not "neutral" and cannot be decoupled from questions of design and technology ethics. Proper engagement with the ethical guidance coming out of e.g. the IEEE or EU Comisssion is going to be crucial in achieving real world acceptability and deployment. One focus of my work is exploring how we can put such guidance into practice as interaction designers/developers. This includes reflecting on our research, design and development processes (how we *do* HRI) as well as properly considering and understanding the real-world impacts of robot deployment.

Particularly related to the former is my work on Feminist HRI. In this work (conducted in close collaboration with gender studies scholars Ericka Johnson and Katherine Harrison amongst others) we present a set of principles and reflexive questions designed to support a power-sensitive approach to HRI whilst also generating new and exciting research directions akin to what we see in feminist human-computer interaction. Below you can watch a short presentation that goes along with the paper and introduces some key themes.

On the latter, I have e.g. worked with ethical risk assessment and mitigation as a pragmatic approach to designing safe, ethical and trustworthy interactions, in line also with e.g. European Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI and the British Standards Institute BS 8611 Guide to the Ethical Design and Application of Robots and Robotic Systems . I continue to explore methods for ethical HRI design and development, and to futher identify ethical risks and opportunities around real world robot deployment (see e.g. my latests work on robots and domestic abuse).

Selected Publications

Winkle, Katie, et al. "Anticipating the Use of Robots in Domestic Abuse: A Typology of Robot Facilitated Abuse to Support Risk Assessment and Mitigation in Human-Robot Interaction." Proceedings of the 2024 ACM/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction. 2024. Paper.

Winkle, Katie, et al. "15 years of (who) man robot interaction: Reviewing the h in human-robot interaction." ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction, 12(3), 1-28. 2023 Paper

Winkle, Katie, et al. "Feminist Human-Robot Interaction: Disentangling Power, Principles and Practice for Better, More Ethical HRI" Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction. 2023. Awarded Best Paper: Theory and Methods. Paper.

Winkle, Katie, et al. "Assessing and addressing ethical risk from anthropomorphism and deception in socially assistive robots." Proceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. 2021. Paper; Video Presentation