A researcher from the University of Warwick, UK, has come up with a new set of values that all robots who will be involved in the care of humans should have.

The values, Professor Tom Sorell, identified relate to safety, privacy, independence, autonomy, enablement and social connections.

They come at a time when robotics are increasingly being used and proposed for use across a growing number of sectors.

Those identified build upon the three laws of robotics which were designed by Isaac Asimov in 1942.

At that time the laws were aiming to provide a framework for the developing relationship between humans and robots.

However we now live in a age where the use of robotics and AI is a reality and in some sectors robotics are being used to make wide scale changes.

Sorell’s six values are:

Autonomy – being able to set goals in life and choose means;

Independence – being able to implement one’s goals without the permission, assistance or material resources of others;

Enablement – having, or having access to, the means of realizing goals and choices;

Safety – being able readily to avoid pain or harm;

Privacy – being able to pursue and realize one’s goals and implement one’s choices unobserved

Social Connectedness – having regular contact with friends and loved ones and safe access to strangers one can choose to meet.

In recent research by the Pew Centre, US, into what the future of robotics will be like Nishant Shah a professor at Leuphana University in Germany said that robots that will be working in care in the future will need to be able to blend in.

The research from the US centre highlight that robotics will be involved in a large part of the care sector in the future.

David Clark, from MIT, said: “We will see robots in health care and care of the elderly. But these may not be humanoid robots, but devices designed to work in specialized spaces designed for them.”

For this to happen the guidelines set down by Sornell may be crucial in ensuring there is a level of trust and safety measures which will ensure care to be enhanced by robotics.

However he said that there may be exceptions needed for the importance of the autonomy of the robots as they more into the healthcare roles.

He said: “Exceptions might be where older people lack ‘capacity’ in the legal sense (in which case they would not be autonomous), where they are highly dependent, or where leading life in one’s own way is highly likely to lead to the need for rescue”.

“Robots designed to let the user control information about their own routines and activities (including mishaps) are also to be preferred to those engaged in data-sharing with worried relations or health care workers”.