Degrees of Freedom

Why the field of robotics tends to reinforce white patriarchal systems of power—and how roboticists can work to change these systems.

In Degrees of Freedom, Tom Williams explores critical questions at the intersection of robotics and social justice. He considers the ways in which roboticists design their robots’ appearance, how robots think and act, how robots perceive people, and the domains into which robots are deployed. The book highlights not only the ways roboticists tend to reinforce white patriarchal power structures but also how roboticists might instead subvert those power structures by applying theories and methods from a diverse range of fields.

Drawing on computer science; history and politics; law, criminology, and sociology; feminist, ethnic, and Black studies; literary and media studies; and social, moral, and cognitive psychology, the book connects questions of robot design with larger abolitionist movements by presenting a vision for a more socially just future of robotics.Contents
1 Secret Agents 1
2 Black Servos, White Masks 29
3 Identity Crisis 83
4 Control System 133
5 Bounding Box 161
6 End Effector 201
7 Future Tense 257
Notes 267
Bibliography 313ENDORSEMENTS

“Working from within the belly of the beast, Williams offers insights from the humanities and social sciences, especially critical social theory, to imagine an equitable robotic future. True to an engineering ethos of ’doing better,’ this book both explores the foundational aspects of power that invisibly shape robot design and suggests how to build robots better suited for advancing social justice.”
—Ericka Johnson, Professor of Gender and Society, Linköping University, Sweden

“Degrees of Freedom is a perfect example of how transgressing the boundaries of hegemonic computing epistemologies better informs our collective understanding of not only how societal oppressions are replicated or exacerbated by robotics but also why the eradication of these harms is necessary and possible for a more just society. It’s this transgression that makes this book a must-read for scholars, professionals, students, and activists whose work creates, examines, or uses robots.”
—Nicki Washington, Cue Family Professor of the Practice of Computer Science, Duke UniversityTom Williams is Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Colorado School of Mines, where he directs the Mines Interactive Robotics Research Lab. He has received Early Career awards from NSF, NASA, and AFOSR.