Implementing Responsible Research and Innovation for Care Robots through BS 8611

The concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has gained prominence in European research. It has been integrated into the EU’s Horizon 2020 research framework as well as a number of individual Member States’ research strategies. Elsewhere we have discussed how the idea of RRI can be applied to healthcare robots (Stahl and Coeckelbergh, 2016) and we have speculated what such an implementation might look like in social reality (Stahl et al., 2014). In this paper I will explore how parallel developments reflect the reasoning in RRI. The focus of the paper will therefore be on the recently published standard on “Robots and robotic devices: Guide to the ethical design and application of robots and robotic systems” (BSI, 2016). I will analyse the standard and discuss how it can be applied to care robots. The key question to be discussed is whether and to what degree this can be seen as an implementation of RRI in the area of care robotics.