

“Integrative Social Robotics” (ISR) is a new approach or general method for generating social robotics applications that are culturally sustainable (Seibt 2016). The paper briefly recapitulates the primary motivation for ISR. Currently social robotics is caught in a compounded version of the Collingridge dilemma—a triple gridlock of description, evaluation, and regulation tasks. In a second step we describe how ISR can overcome this gridlock, presenting five principles that should guide the research, design, and development (RDD) process for applications in social robotics. Characteristic of ISR is to intertwine a mixed method approach (i.e., conducting experimental, quantitative, qualitative, and phenomenological research for the same envisaged application) with conceptual and axiological analysis in philosophy; moreover, ISR is value-driven and abides by the “non-replacement principle”: social robots may only do what humans should but cannot do. In conclusion we suggest, with reference to a classification of different formats of pluridisciplinary research by Nersessian and Newstetter (2013), that ISR may establish social robotics as a new transdiscipline.