Humanizing autonomy : social scientists' and engineers' futures for robotic cars

Highly automated cars -- unlike robots in factories -- must operate in existing social spaces, which are complex and hard to control. Unlike household robots, these systems are also fast and dangerous. The fundamental problem of getting robots to interact in the world will be getting them to do the "right thing" -- according to developers, users, and societies. But what is "right" is a matter of perspective, and there will be many ways to achieve any particular robotic performance. Through ethnographic fieldwork at a site of robotic vehicle development, I investigate alternative strategies for robotic cars and discuss their social implications. Supported by a framework from multispecies ethnography and the practices of robot developers, I argue that robots do not see like humans or experience the world as humans do. But they must be explicitly made to think -- to represent the world and act in it --

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Stayton, Erik Lee.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David Mindell.

• Program in Science, Technology and Society.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129050

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/129050