Research Programs
The institute currently focuses on three connected areas: Robot Rights, Robot Governance, and Robot Labor.
About
About the Institute
A research institute for the age of intelligent machines.
Human-Robot Relations Institute is an independent research hub dedicated to understanding the ethical, legal, social, and economic relationship between humans and intelligent machines.
Founding statement
Building a field before it is fully established
The relationship between humans and intelligent machines is becoming too important to remain scattered across isolated conversations. Questions of ethics, governance, labor, responsibility, and social meaning increasingly overlap. Human-Robot Relations Institute exists to help bring these questions into a more coherent field of study.
Rather than treating robotics and AI only as technical systems, the institute approaches them as participants in a changing social world. This includes questions about how humans relate to machines, how institutions respond to them, and how concepts such as rights, governance, and labor may evolve over time.
Mission
To develop concepts, publications, and public-facing initiatives that help societies understand, govern, and ethically engage with intelligent machines.
Institute structure
How the institute is organized
The institute is designed as a research-centered hub with connected program sites, publications, and public initiatives.
Publications
Essays, concept papers, and foundational writing that define and develop the field of human-robot relations.
Initiatives
Public-facing projects and association-based activities that support discussion, visibility, and long-term institutional growth.
Research approach
An interdisciplinary field
Human-Robot Relations is not only a technical topic. It draws from multiple traditions of inquiry.
Ethics & Philosophy
How should humans think about moral consideration, agency, dignity, and responsibility in relation to intelligent machines?
Law & Governance
What legal frameworks and institutional designs are needed as machines become more socially embedded and operationally autonomous?
Economy & Society
How do automation, machine labor, and human-robot collaboration reshape work, value, and social organization?
Project sites
Program-linked domains
Each major research area can develop through its own dedicated project site while remaining connected to the institute as a whole.