Robots are being designed to communicate with people in various public and domestic venues in a helpful, discreet way. Here, we use a speculative approach to shine light on a new concept of robot steganography (RS), that a robot could seek to help vulnerable populations by discreetly warning of potential threats. We first identify some potentially useful scenarios for RS related to safety and security -- concerns that are estimated to cost the world trillions of dollars each year -- with a focus on two kinds of robots, an autonomous vehicle (AV) and a socially assistive humanoid robot (SAR). Next, we propose that existing, powerful, computer-based steganography (CS) approaches can be adopted with little effort in new contexts (SARs), while also pointing out potential benefits of human-like steganography (HS): although less efficient and robust than CS, HS represents a currently-unused form of RS that could also be used to avoid requiring computers or detection by more technically advanced adversaries. This analysis also introduces some unique challenges of RS that arise from message generation, indirect perception, and effects of perspective. For this, we explore some related theoretical and practical concerns for selecting carrier signals and generating messages, also making available some code and a video demo. Finally, we report on checking the current feasibility of the RS concept via a simplified user study, confirming that messages can be hidden in a robot's behaviors. The immediate implication is that RS could help to improve people's lives and mitigate some costly problems -- suggesting the usefulness of further discussion, ideation, and consideration by designers.

中文翻译：

---

“机器人隐写术”？：机遇与挑战

机器人被设计成以一种有用、谨慎的方式与各种公共和家庭场所的人们交流。在这里，我们使用一种推测性的方法来阐明机器人隐写术 (RS) 的新概念，即机器人可以通过谨慎地警告潜在威胁来寻求帮助弱势群体。我们首先确定了与安全和安保相关的 RS 的一些潜在有用场景——估计每年花费世界数万亿美元的担忧——重点是两种机器人，一种自动驾驶汽车 (AV) 和一种社会辅助人形机器人 (SAR)。接下来，我们建议可以在新环境 (SAR) 中轻松采用现有的、强大的、基于计算机的隐写术 (CS) 方法，同时还指出类人隐写术 (HS) 的潜在好处：尽管 HS 的效率和鲁棒性不如 CS，但它代表了一种当前未使用的 RS 形式，它也可用于避免需要计算机或被技术更先进的对手检测。该分析还介绍了 RS 的一些独特挑战，这些挑战源于消息生成、间接感知和视角效果。为此，我们探讨了选择载波信号和生成消息的一些相关理论和实践问题，还提供了一些代码和视频演示。最后，我们报告通过简化的用户研究检查 RS 概念的当前可行性，确认消息可以隐藏在机器人的行为中。直接的含义是 RS 可以帮助改善人们的生活并减轻一些代价高昂的问题——这表明进一步讨论、构思、