Public Acceptance of Fundamental Rights via a Telepresence Robot and a Video Call Stand in South Korea

Technical mediations are commonly used by remote persons to exercise legal rights in distant places, but the legal ability of remote persons to substitute their physical presence using technical mediations is broadly shaped by whether the public accepts that a specific form of technical mediation of a remote person is tantamount to their physical presence. In telepresence robot markets, local users already accept that remote robot operators can exercise serious professional rights via telepresence robots. It is likely that the public acceptance of local rights of remote operators via telepresence robots in workplaces may at some point be expanded to include more fundamental human rights in social life. To verify the superior potential of remote operators mediated via telepresence robots to be socially accepted as bearers of fundamental rights, which theoretically qualify the juridical concept of “person” as bearers of rights and following duties, this study compared public acceptance of remote operators to exercise fundamental rights via a telepresence robot with physical control and a stationary video call stand without physical control. In experiments with 210 Korean participants, responses to whether a remote operator mediated via a telepresence robot should be granted fundamental rights were close to neutral, which was generally higher than the responses received for a remote person mediated by a stationary video call stand. The result shows that a remote operator with physical control on a technical mediation has more potentials to evolve into legal persons with greater fundamental rights in a local environment.