Ethical implications of having a robot help teach a child with ASD

Robotics has been widely used for assisting different aspects of people with disabilities, while less focus has been put on the ethical aspects and problems these technologies can lead to. One of these use cases is to use robotics technologies to assist in teaching social skills to children with autism spectrum disorders. While this technology can help these children a lot, there might be some harm or drawbacks that should be considered beforehand. One of the main aspects that need to be focused on is ethical issues related to using these technologies for these children. This study aims to go in-depth into these issues by focusing on a case study and trying to pinpoint the main ethical issues that might arise when using robotics. So, we came up with a research question: “What are the ethical implications of having a robot to help teach a child with autism?” To answer the research question of this study, we have adopted a qualitative approach and have collected data from two data sources. First, we conducted a literature review and collected all the relevant results from previous articles. Then, we continued by interviewing some of the researchers from the ROSA research group who are working on a project intending to provide children with autism with a robot to assist their social skill learning. Finally, we have analysed data collected from the abovementioned sources and came up with some recommendations and solutions to ethical implementations in projects like ROSA. We hope this study plays a role in opening some viewpoints and attracting more attention to the ethical issues when using different technologies. Keywords: Ethics, Roboethics, Robotics, Robots, Children with ASD, ASD, Teaching Social Skills, Social Robots.