- Ezirim Kelechi ThankGod*, Sani Abubakar Muhammed, Aniugo Victor Onyekachi, Nwaokolo Ikechukwu Frank, Obi Obichukwu Immanuel, Okoronkwo Iheanyi Chinedu & Okwuonu Stanley Chinedu
- Mechatronics Engineering Department; Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria
- DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21907428
The fourth and fifth industrial revolution is
revolutionarily seeing the emergence of Social Robots being adopted in
hospitals, clinical, elderly care, and mental health settings with the
potentials of reducing staff burden, delays, truancy and improving patient
engagement. Interestingly, the 2020–2026 deployment data show a
“pilot-to-purgatory” pattern as 63% of healthcare robot trials are discontinued
after 6 months. This systematic review examines the ethical and technical
pathways that will shape and determine whether social robots will become a
trusted part of the healthcare workforce or remain as an “uncanny” novelty.
Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, 141 peer-reviewed studies from PubMed, IEEE
Xplore, Scopus, and ACM 2020–2026 were analyzed. Findings were organized into
1.Ethical pathways: autonomy, privacy, accountability, and dehumanization; and
2.Technical pathways: affect recognition, long-term interaction, safety, and
clinical integration. Results indicate that the “uncanny valley” is now less
about appearance and more about role ambiguity, data governance, and brittle
socio-emotional AI. A Proposal on an “Ethical-Technical Readiness” [ETR]
framework is done and a 4-stage pathway: Tool- to- Companion- to- Teammate- to
-Care Partner. The review concludes that healthcare will adopt social robots
with open hands when and only when technical reliability is matched by ethical
legibility.
