Consent Chain Degradation in Embodied Multi-Agent Systems: Bridging the Gap Between AI Agent Governance and Robot Ethics

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of consent chain degradation in multi-robot systems, analyzing how human consent erodes through delegation chains and proposing a governance framework to address this issue.

Contribution

It presents the CCD framework and CoRVE architecture to model, track, and assess consent degradation in embodied multi-agent robotic systems.

Findings

Consent erodes across delegation chains in robotics scenarios.

Existing regulations do not address core aspects of consent degradation.

The proposed framework helps ensure accountability in multi-robot systems.

Abstract

Robotic systems are moving from isolated platforms to interconnected multi-agent ecosystems that operate in human environments. This shift raises a governance problem that existing frameworks do not address: how does consent propagate, degrade, and break down across chains of delegation between embodied autonomous agents? The AI ethics community has begun to study consent for digital software agents, and the HRI community has examined consent in dyadic human-robot encounters. Neither body of work covers what happens when physical robots delegate tasks to other robots in ways that affect humans. This paper introduces consent chain degradation (CCD), a conceptual framework for analyzing how the specificity, validity, and scope of human consent erodes as authority passes through multi-robot delegation chains. We propose a three-layer governance architecture, the Consent Runtime Verification Framework for Embodied Agents (CoRVE), which integrates consent scope modeling, delegation chain tracking, and physical irreversibility assessment. Three scenarios in healthcare, domestic, and industrial robotics show how CCD arises in practice, including a worked numerical example. A regulatory gap analysis covering the EU AI Act, the GDPR, the Machinery Regulation, and the Revised Product Liability Directive shows that all four instruments leave core CCD dimensions unaddressed.