  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.
