  Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used in HRI research by
including social robots in health-care interventions by virtue of their ability
to engage human users both social and emotional dimensions. Research projects
on this topic exist all over the globe in the USA, Europe, and Asia. All of
these projects have the overall ambitious goal to increase the well-being of a
vulnerable population. Typical work in RAT is performed using remote controlled
robots; a technique called Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ). The robot is usually controlled,
unbeknownst to the patient, by a human operator. However, WoZ has been
demonstrated to not be a sustainable technique in the long-term. Providing the
robots with autonomy (while remaining under the supervision of the therapist)
has the potential to lighten the therapists burden, not only in the therapeutic
session itself but also in longer-term diagnostic tasks. Therefore, there is a
need for exploring several degrees of autonomy in social robots used in
therapy. Increasing the autonomy of robots might also bring about a new set of
challenges. In particular, there will be a need to answer new ethical questions
regarding the use of robots with a vulnerable population, as well as a need to
ensure ethically-compliant robot behaviours. Therefore, in this workshop we
want to gather findings and explore which degree of autonomy might help to
improve health-care interventions and how we can overcome the ethical
challenges inherent to it.
