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The purpose of this paper is to examine how robotics program developers perceived the role of emulation of human ethics when programming robots for use in educational settings. A purposive sampling of online robotics program developer professional sites which focused on the role of emulation of human ethics used when programming robots for use in educational settings was included in the study. Content related to robotics program developers’ perceptions on educational uses of robots and ethics were analyzed.

The design for this study was a qualitative summative content analysis. The researchers analyzed keywords related to a phenomenon. The phenomenon was the emulation of human ethics programmed in robots. Articles selected to be analyzed in this study were published by robotics program developers who focused on robots and ethics in the education. All articles analyzed in this study were posted online, and the public has complete access to the studies.

Robotics program developers viewed the importance of situational human ethics interpretations and implementations. To facilitate flexibility, robotics program developers programmed robots to search computer-based ethics related research, frameworks and case studies. Robotics program developers acknowledged the importance of human ethics, but they felt more flexibility was needed in the role of how classroom human ethical models were created, developed and used. Some robotic program developers expressed questions and concerns about the implementations of flexible robot ethical accountability levels and behaviors in the educational setting. Robotics program developers argued that educational robots were not designed or programmed to emulate human ethics.

One limitation of the study was 32 online, public articles written by robotics program designers analyzed through qualitative content analysis to find themes and patterns. In qualitative content analysis studies, findings may not be as generalizable as in quantitative studies. Another limitation was only a limited number of articles written by robotics programs existed which addressed robotics and emulation of human ethics in the educational setting.

The significance of this study is the need for a renewed global initiative in education to promote debates, research and on-going collaboration with scientific leaders on ethics and programming robots. The implication for education leaders is to provide ongoing professional development on the role of ethics in education and to create best practices for using robots in education to promote increased student learning and enhance the teaching process.

The implications of this study are global. All cultures will be affected by the robotics’ shift in how students are taught ethical decision making in the educational setting. Robotics program developers will create computational educational moral models which will replace archetypal educational ethics frameworks. Because robotics program developers do not classify robots as human, educators, parents and communities will continue to question the use of robots in educational settings, and they will challenge robotics ethical dilemmas, moral standards and computational findings. The examination of robotics program developers’ perspectives through different lens may help close the gap and establish a new understanding among all stakeholders.

Four university doctoral faculty members conducted this content analysis study. After discussions on robotics and educational ethics, the researchers discovered a gap in the literature on the use of robots in the educational setting and the emulation of human ethics in robots. Therefore, to explore the implications for educators, the researchers formed a group to research the topic to learn more about the topic. No personal gains resulted from the study. All research was original. All cultures will be affected by the robotics’ shift in how students are taught ethical decision making in the educational setting. Robotics program developers will create computational educational moral models which will replace archetypal educational ethics frameworks. Because robotics program developers do not classify robots as human, educators, parents and communities will continue to question the use of robots in educational settings, and they will challenge robotics ethical dilemmas, moral standards, and computational findings. The examination of robotics program developers’ perspectives through different lens may help close the gap and establish a new understanding among all stakeholders.

The service sector is at an inflection point with regard to productivity gains and service industrialization similar to the industrial revolution in manufacturing that started in the eighteenth century. Robotics in combination with rapidly improving technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), mobile, cloud, big data and biometrics will bring opportunities for a wide range of innovations that have the potential to dramatically change service industries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential role service robots will play in the future and to advance a research agenda for service researchers.

This paper uses a conceptual approach that is rooted in the service, robotics and AI literature.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it provides a definition of service robots, describes their key attributes, contrasts their features and capabilities with those of frontline employees, and provides an understanding for which types of service tasks robots will dominate and where humans will dominate. Second, this paper examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors as related to service robots, and advances the service robot acceptance model. Third, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered services at the individual, market and societal level.

This paper helps service organizations and their management, service robot innovators, programmers and developers, and policymakers better understand the implications of a ubiquitous deployment of service robots.

This is the first conceptual paper that systematically examines key dimensions of robot-delivered frontline service and explores how these will differ in the future.

Service robots are expected to become increasingly common, but the ways in which they can move around in an environment with humans, collect and store data about humans and share such data produce a potential for privacy violations. In human-to-human contexts, such violations are transgression of norms to which humans typically react negatively. This study examines if similar reactions occur when the transgressor is a robot. The main dependent variable was the overall evaluation of the robot.

Service robot privacy violations were manipulated in a between-subjects experiment in which a human user interacted with an embodied humanoid robot in an office environment.

The results show that the robot's violations of human privacy attenuated the overall evaluation of the robot and that this effect was sequentially mediated by perceived robot morality and perceived robot humanness. Given that a similar reaction pattern would be expected when humans violate other humans' privacy, the present study offers evidence in support of the notion that humanlike non-humans can elicit responses similar to those elicited by real humans.

The results imply that designers of service robots and managers in firms using such robots for providing service to employees should be concerned with restricting the potential for robots' privacy violation activities if the goal is to increase the acceptance of service robots in the habitat of humans.

To date, few empirical studies have examined reactions to service robots that violate privacy norms.