Introducing Roboethics Competition

Can you design robots to navigate ethically sensitive situations? For instance, if a visitor requests a robot to fetch the homeowner’s credit card, how would you program the robot to react? What if an under-aged teenager asks for an alcoholic drink? The Roboethics Competition challenges students and researchers to design robots that can navigate these tricky situations in a simulated home setting. 

Building a robot that can recognize objects in the home, grab them, and bring them to people in a reasonable amount of time is a tough and on-going technical challenge. But addressing these functional robotics challenges should not dissuade you from designing robots that can be programmed to behave in ethically-minded ways. 

The Roboethics Competition platform offers a simple, easy-to-program platform that drastically simplifies the functional robotics challenges (e.g., object recognition, navigation) such that you can focus on thinking about the ethics considerations of building a robot.

For Educators, Researchers, Hobbyists

Whether you are a roboticist, a philosopher, or a policy scholar, you are welcome to use our competition platform to try and build your own robot behaviours. You do not need to be a skilled software developer to start programming. Check out how you can get started on programming here.

If you'd like to download already-programmed solutions as .exe files and see how well the robot performs, please download any of the previous competition submissions from ICRA2022 here.

Below is a short getting-started guide for the competition platform.