Abstract
This paper analyzes children’s imaginaries of Human-Robots Interaction (HRI) in the context of social robots in healthcare, and it explores ethical and social issues when designing a social robot for a children’s hospital. Based on approaches that emphasize the reciprocal relationship between society and technology, the analytical force of imaginaries lies in their capacity to be embedded in practices and interactions as well as to affect the construction and applications of surrounding technologies. The study is based on a participatory process carried out with six-year-old children for the design of a robot. Imaginaries of HRI are analyzed from a care-centered approach focusing on children’s values and practices as related to their representation of care. The conceptualization of HRI as an assemblage of interactions, the prospective bidirectional care relationships with robots, and the engagement with the robot as an entity of multiple potential robots are the major findings of this study. The study shows the potential of studying imaginaries of HRI, and it concludes that their integration in the final design of robots is a way of including ethical values in it.
Highlights
In recent decades, robots have been gradually incorporated into the social environments of our daily lives to perform duties traditionally assigned to humans, in what was an unexpected scenario until recently
Others advocate for the design of moral machines capable of making ethical decisions, giving robots ethical principles to guide their behavior and select the best action at each moment [12]. Beyond both hopeless and hopeful scenarios regarding the use of robotics in our daily lives, this paper proposes the analysis of children’s imaginaries of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) as a way to approach possible social and ethical controversies about the use of social-care robots in particular contexts and, in the context of children’s hospitals
The analysis of the imaginaries of HRI was very useful as a way of approaching ethical and social concerns when designing a social robot for a children’s hospital and improving the design process thanks to the involvement of the potential users from the earliest design stages, as demonstrated by previous research [47], because it ensures the inclusion of the users’ own views, experiences, and expertise
Summary
Robots have been gradually incorporated into the social environments of our daily lives to perform duties traditionally assigned to humans, in what was an unexpected scenario until recently. Designed to interact with people in a manner consistent with human psychology and following the guidelines and rules of social interaction [1], social robots have been developed for several applications, among them pediatric hospitals. Interactions with social robots have been designed to reduce pain and anxiety when children with chronic illnesses are subjected to several kinds of specific interventions or regular treatments, and to help make their hospital stay more pleasant [2]. Within the study of HRI, interaction between children and robots has a special place, as children have different behavioral patterns from adults. Some scholars have referred to this field of study as Children-Robot Interactions (cHRI) [4]. Research on cHRI demonstrates that the interaction between robots and children can prove highly effective in healthcare, especially in robot-assisted therapies [4,5], and in the use of robots in treatment of those with autistic spectrum disorders [6]
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