Paper short abstract:

The increasing presence of robots in society has taken debates around makes the general society and specifically fields of knowledge asking more about the ethics terms involved in that construction. How the field of STS can collaborate with that discussion?

Paper long abstract:

The expansion of the robotics field leads to an increase of robots presence in people's lives. Imagining scenarios around the effects of robot's presence in society has left to be a topic just for science fiction books and movies. It is not uncommon nowadays to find interesting debates inside academic and social institutions that take into consideration the need to discuss about the ethical and legal implications of robotics. Several topics are produced in these legal and ethical debates but here we are interested in two specific dimensions that affect robots production: how ethical principles are built into the robot and what legal framework is needed? The purpose of this paper is to discuss what are the theoretical contributions that STS can provide to these inquiries stemming from the human-computer interaction area when developing such robots. Few questions serve as guides to deepen our proposal: Does conducting work together between engineers, social scientists and medical staff make possible to build a common ethical path? How ethics is linked to methodologies adopted for the design of robots? Is it possible to coexist different ethical considerations in the same project? What legal concerns appear in the development of robots?