Caring for robots

How care comes to matter in human-machine interfacing

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8106589
AutoresBenjamin Lipp (0000-0003-4220-1532, Science Studies and Innovation Research, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume53
Fascículo5
Páginas660-685
Data de publicação2022-04-07
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSocial Studies of Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0306-3127 • E-ISSN: 1460-3659
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/03063127221081446
PMID35387514
OpenAlexW4225974503
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas34
Referências citadas44

Care robots promise to assist older people in an ageing society. This article investigates the socio-material conditions of care with robots by focusing on the usually invisible practices of human-machine interfacing. I define human-machine interfacing as the activities by roboticists and others to render interaction between robots and people possible in the first place. This includes, efforts to render prototypical arrangements of care 'robot-friendly'. In my video-assisted ethnography of human-robot interaction (HRI) experiments. I identify four types of interfacing practices, where care comes to matter: integrating the ephemeral entity that is 'a robot', helping it by way of mundane courtesies, making users 'fit' for interacting with it, and establishing corridors of interaction between the robot and people's bodies. I show that robots do not so much care for (older) people but rather, the other way around - people need to care for robots. Hence, care robots are not simply agents of care but also objects of care, rendering necessary a symmetrical analysis of human-machine interfacing. Furthermore, these practices do not merely reflect the prototypical state of the art in robotics. Rather, they indicate a more general mode of how robots and people interface. I argue that care with robots requires us to re-consider the exclusive focus on the human and at least complement it with care for the non-human and, incidentally, the robotic, too

Human–computer interaction · Human–robot interaction · Interfacing · Mobile robot · Robot · Robot control · Robotics · Social robot · Sociology · Computer Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction · Social Robot Interaction and HRI · Artificial Intelligence