Unit 16: Human Control, Safety, and Ethics

A robot is never only hardware and software. Someone defines what it may do, who can interrupt it, what information it may retain, and what happens when automation is uncertain.

Put authority on the diagram

Who Is Allowed to Make the Decision? separates capability from permission. Stops, Overrides, and Interfaces treats a stop as a designed state transition. Ethics Shows Up in Requirements turns broad values into testable system constraints.

Produce requirements that change architecture

Keep an authority map and a set of testable safety, privacy, or accessibility requirements.

At least one requirement should force a technical consequence such as a stop path, data-retention rule, interface behavior, or fallback mode.

"Have a human in the loop" is too vague. State what the person can observe, what they can command, and how quickly the system must respond.

Safety is part of self-paced access

No learner needs powered hardware to complete this Unit. Use scenarios, interface diagrams, state traces, or simulation. If physical systems are observed, local authorization still controls the activity.