The Helpless Robot and the Serving Human

Abstract Today’s robots are often perceived as technologically advanced, yet their limitations become evident in dynamic environments such as public spaces, where they sometimes require assistance from incidentally copresent persons. Empirical research has shown that humans are generally willing to help robots, for example by freeing a delivery robot stuck in snow. Designers have deliberately adopted strategies to elicit such human assistance. This paper argues that these design practices raise ethical concerns. It distinguishes between functional incapacity, a robot’s genuine inability to perform a task in a given environment, and performative incapacity, a deliberately designed appearance of helplessness intended to solicit human service. To enable a nuanced ethical analysis, the paper further introduces the Elicitation Spectrum, which maps robot behaviors from passive presence to coercive pressure. Performative incapacity, particularly at the expressive end of the spectrum, constitutes a form of hidden state deception. From a Kantian perspective, such deception is always morally impermissible. From a consequentialist perspective, its moral status depends on outcomes: the paper therefore discusses both potential beneficial effects, such as reinforcing prosocial behavior, and potential harms to the InCoP and to society more broadly. The paper concludes by calling for greater scrutiny of human–robot interaction in public spaces and by proposing normative recommendations for the ethical design of robots in public spaces.