In recent years, increasing emphasis has been placed on the application of the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework to the field of robotics, with the aim of developing robots that will benefit society, whilst producing the least harm to the environment. The growing field of soft robotics uses materials that, differently from those found in conventional rigid robots, are soft and flexible and so allow us to make robots that behave, and feel, much more like living organisms. Thus, soft robotics promises to allow safer human-robot interaction, and develop a new generation of robots that are safer for the environment.

Perhaps owing to these promises, limited attention has been paid to the application of RRI to soft robotics, and no paper has so far provided a comprehensive overview of the ethical concerns that emerge from soft robotics advances. However, fundamental research in soft robotics is likely to increase the number of soft systems used in our everyday life and by untrained users. Thus, it has become urgent to undertake an ethical survey of the field. This presentation, which results from a collaboration between ethicists and soft roboticists, outlines some key ethical questions in soft robotics, around the following themes: (1) Uncanny valley, yuck factor, and the risk of deception; (2) Opportunity, environmental, and social costs; (3) Trust and trustworthiness; and (4) Challenging the myth of safe and innocuous robots.