A Morality Menu for a Domestic Robot

LADYBIRD, the animal-friendly vacuum cleaning robot, was conceived in 2014 by Oliver Bendel and introduced at Stanford University (AAAI Spring Symposia) in 2017 and then implemented as a prototype at the School of Business FHNW. In the context of the project, a menu was proposed with which the user can set the morale of the vacuum cleaner robot. As the name implies, it spares ladybirds. It should also let spiders live. But if you want to have certain insects sucked in, you could define this via a menu. It is important that LADYBIRD remains animal-friendly overall. The idea was to develop a proxy morality in detail via the menu. The vacuum cleaner robot as a proxy machine does what the owner would do. In 2018 the morality menu (MOME) for LADYBIRD was born as a design study. It can be combined with other approaches and technologies. In this way, the user could learn how others have decided and how the personal morality that he has transferred to the machine is assessed. He could also be warned and enlightened if he wants to suck in not only vermin but also spiders.

Fig.: Morality menu for LADYBIRD