Constitutional Robotics: System Calls as the Programming Model for Actuation, Sensing, and Epistemic World Interaction

Robotics systems traditionally treat actuation and sensing as direct extensions of computation. Controllers generate commands, middleware transmits them, and actuators execute. Authority is positional: if code runs within the control stack, its commands are presumed legitimate. Safety mechanisms are layered on top, but the ontology of actuation remains unchanged. Constitutional Robotics proposes a foundational programming model reform. All reality-touching operations - actuation, sensing, persistence, communication, and time - are expressed as constitutional system calls. Instead of invoking hardware directly, controllers submit proposals to a governed boundary. An explicit admissibility function evaluates authority, policy, and safety constraints before returning a structured outcome: execute, simulate, defer, or refuse. This architectural shift separates computation from jurisdiction. The computational core remains effect-pure; world interaction becomes an adjudicated boundary crossing. The paper formalizes: A minimal robotics syscall interface Compositional multi-authority evaluation chains Structured refusal semantics Legitimacy-state feedback as a first-class control signal A constitutional logging substrate enabling deterministic replay and forensic auditability Constitutional robotics unifies hardware and simulation pathways under a shared syscall boundary, enabling replay parity between physical systems and digital twins. Refusal becomes structured information rather than implicit override. Controllers gain visibility into admissibility constraints, enabling authority-aware adaptation and safer planning. Rather than treating robots as unilateral actors, constitutional robotics reframes them as petitioners operating under explicit contracts. The result is a drift-resistant, auditable, and jurisdictionally coherent foundation for autonomous systems operating in safety-critical and regulated environments.