We are witnessing a rapid increase in real-world autonomous robotic deployments in environments ranging from indoor homes and commercial establishments to large-scale urban areas, with applications ranging from domestic assistance to urban last-mile delivery. The developers of these robots inevitably have to make impactful design decisions to ensure commercial viability, but such decisions have serious real-world consequences. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for such projects to face intense bouts of social backlash, which can be attributed to a wide variety of causes, ranging from inappropriate technical design choices to transgressions of social norms and lack of community engagement. To better prepare students for the rigors of developing and deploying real-world robotics systems, we developed a Responsible Robotics teaching module, intended to be included in upper-division and graduate-level robotics courses. Our module is structured as a role-playing exercise that aims to equip students with a framework for navigating the conflicting goals of human actors which govern robots in the field. We report on instructor reflections and anonymous survey responses from offering our responsible robotics module in graduate-level and upper-division undergraduate robotics courses at UT Austin. The responses indicate that students gained a deeper understanding of the socio-technical factors of real-world robotics deployments than they might have using self-study methods, and the students proactively suggested that such modules should be more broadly included in CS courses.

翻译：我们正目睹自主机器人在现实环境中的快速部署增长，涵盖从室内住宅、商业场所到大规模城市区域等场景，应用领域包括家庭辅助及城市末端配送。这些机器人的开发者不可避免地需要做出影响深远的工程设计决策以确保商业可行性，但此类决策往往产生严重的现实后果。然而，此类项目时常面临剧烈社会反弹的情形并不罕见，其成因可归结为技术设计不当、社会规范越界乃至社区参与缺失等多重因素。为帮助学生更好地应对实际机器人系统开发与部署的复杂性，我们开发了"责任机器人学"教学模块，旨在纳入高年级与研究生机器人课程。该模块采用角色扮演练习形式，旨在构建一个框架，引导学生协调影响机器人运行的人类行为者之间的目标冲突。我们汇报了在德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校研究生与高年级本科机器人课程中实施该模块后教师反思与匿名调查结果。数据显示，相较于自学方式，学生对该模块的学习使其更深入理解现实机器人部署中的社会技术因素，且学生主动建议此类模块应更广泛地纳入计算机科学课程体系。