# An Ethical Black Box for Social Robots: a draft Open Standard

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.06564 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06564/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 13 May 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Testing autonomous vehicles and AI: perspectives and challenges from cybersecurity, transparency, robustness and fairness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14641/) (2024)
- [Enhancing Trust in Autonomous Agents: An Architecture for Accountability and Explainability through Blockchain and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09567/) (2024)
- [On the relationship between Benchmarking, Standards and Certification in Robotics and AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.12139/) (2023)
- [COBRA-PPM: A Causal Bayesian Reasoning Architecture Using Probabilistic Programming for Robot Manipulation Under Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14488/) (2024)
- [Generating Causal Explanations of Vehicular Agent Behavioural Interactions with Learnt Reward Profiles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14557/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper introduces a draft open standard for the robot equivalent of an aircraft flight data recorder, which we call an ethical black box. This is a device, or software module, capable of securely recording operational data (sensor, actuator and control decisions) for a social robot, in order to support the investigation of accidents or near-miss incidents. The open standard, presented as an annex to this paper, is offered as a first draft for discussion within the robot ethics community. Our intention is to publish further drafts following feedback, in the hope that the standard will become a useful reference for social robot designers, operators and robot accident/incident investigators.