Citation: Batool, A.; Loke, S.W.;
Fernando, N.; Kua, J. Towards a
Policy Development Methodology
for Human-Centred IoT Collectives.
Sensors 2022, 22, 7401. https://
doi.org/10.3390/s22197401
Academic Editors: Sara Comai
and Fabio Salice
Received: 5 September 2022
Accepted: 25 September 2022
Published: 29 September 2022
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Article
Towards a Policy Development Methodology for
Human-Centred IoT Collectives
Amna Batool * , Seng W. Loke , Niroshinie Fernando and Jonathan Kua
School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC 3220, Australia
* Correspondence: abatool@deakin.edu.au
Abstract:
Embedding ethical concepts into smart Internet-connected devices and making them behave
in a more human-centred manner, i.e., ethically and in a socially acceptable manner, has received
significant attention in the software industry. To make smart devices behave in more human-centered
manners, it is important to develop a methodology for defining smart devices’ key roles and mapping
them with socio-ethical and administrative policies. This paper proposes a policy development
methodology for making smart devices more human-centred by following its four phases i.e., concept
development, defining and mapping policies, implementing the processing of policies, and deploying
the devices. The suggested methodology may be used in a variety of situations where smart devices
interact with people. For illustration, the proposed methodology has been applied to three different
settings, including a supermarket, a children’s hospital, and early learning centers, where each phase
defined in the methodology has been followed. The application of the methodology to smart internet-
connected devices, including robots, smart cameras, and smart speakers, has shown significant
results. It has been observed that the devices behave in more human-centric ways while performing
their core functions, adhering to socio-ethical policies.
Keywords: methodology; socio-ethical policies; IoT collectives; human-centred IoT
1. Introduction
The Internet of Things (IoT) can be defined as a network of Internet-connected objects,
or ‘smart devices’ with computing, sensing and/or actuating capabilities. The usage of these
smart devices within diverse contexts such as smart homes, supermarkets, farms, hospitals
and aged-care settings are increasingly becoming popular [
1
]. In such environments,
multiple users can use smart devices to interact with collections of other smart devices
(e.g., family members living in a smart home). In this work, the term IoT collectives is
used to refer to such systems [
2
]. IoT collectives can support ecosystems consisting of
different users and devices such as smartphones, robots, drones and wearable devices to
interact and work together. However, managing the interaction behaviours of a collection of
heterogeneous devices, and ensuring responsible conduct, in a human-centric way remains
a challenge. Consider a store with several smart trolleys and human customers, where a
smart trolley approaches people and begins following them to carry their items without
their consent. When the smart device engaged with the user in this scenario, it executed its
core functions without the user’s permission. Is it appropriate for a smart device to behave
in this manner?
There is a growing body of literature investigating how people react towards smart
devices [
3
–
6
]. The noteworthy research is on how to make smart devices behave more
human-centrically using ethical frameworks. In one study, Dylan and Aimee [
7
] proposed
an ethical framework to make the design, development, deployment, and evaluation of
drones in public healthcare more efficient. The framework is founded on ethical concepts
such as beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and fairness, as well as comprehensibility.
The ethical framework of the study connects abstract ethical concepts to human values, and
Sensors 2022, 22, 7401. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22197401 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
