TECH08003 2022 Introduction to Social Robotics for the Social Professions

Introduction to social robotics addresses the emerging field of social/personal care robots by purposefully targeting the learning needs of non-STEM learners who are new to the field.  This module focuses on the actual and potential use of social robots in the social professions, such as (but not limited to) social care practice. The module explores the concept of social robotics within an historical and contemporary contexts; introduces examples of real and hypothetical social robots, points to issues of usage and design and wider likely impacts on human social carers professional identities. Through a number of topical case studies involving a number of situated social/personal care robots, this module introduces some of the social, political, and ethical issues involved in the deployment and usage of social robots.

The second edition of this handbook provides a state-of-the-art cover view on the various aspects in the rapidly developing field of robotics. Reaching for the human frontier, robotics is vigorously engaged in the growing challenges of new emerging domains. Interacting, exploring, and working with humans, the new generation of robots will increasingly touch people and their lives. The credible prospect of practical robots among humans is the result of the scientific endeavour of a half a century of robotic developments that established robotics as a modern scientific discipline. The ongoing vibrant expansion and strong growth of the field during the last decade has fueled this second edition of the Springer Handbook of Robotics. The first edition of the handbook soon became a landmark in robotics publishing and won the American Association of Publishers PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics as well as the organizations Award for Engineering & Technology. The second edition of the handbook, edited by two internationally renowned scientists with the support of an outstanding team of seven part editors and more than 200 authors, continues to be an authoritative reference for robotics researchers, newcomers to the field, and scholars from related disciplines. The contents have been restructured to achieve four main objectives: the enlargement of foundational topics for robotics, the enlightenment of design of various types of robotic systems, the extension of the treatment on robots moving in the environment, and the enrichment of advanced robotics applications. Further to an extensive update, fifteen new chapters have been introduced on emerging topics, and a new generation of authors have joined the handbooks team. A novel addition to the second edition is a comprehensive collection of multimedia references to more than 700 videos, which bring valuable insight into the contents. The videos can be viewed directly augmented into the text with a smartphone or tablet using a unique and specially designed app.

The relationship between humans and animals has always been strong, symbiotic and complicated. Animals, real and fictional, have been a mainstay in the arts and entertainment, figuring prominently in literature, film, television, social media, and live performances. Increasingly, though, people are anthropomorphizing animals, assigning them humanoid roles, tasks and identities. At the same time, humans, such as members of the furry culture or college mascots, find pleasure in adopting animal identities and characteristics. This book is the first of its kind to explore these growing phenomena across media. The contributors to this collection represent various disciplines, to include the arts, humanities, social sciences, and healthcare. Their essays demonstrate the various ways that human and animal lives are intertwined and constantly evolving.

The work is a collection of contributions resulting from R&D efforts originated from scientific projects involving academia, technological partners, and end-user institutions. The aim is to provide a comprehensive overview of robotics technology applied to Healthcare, and discuss the anticipation of upcoming challenges. The intersection of Robotics and Medicine includes socially and economically relevant areas, such as rehabilitation, therapy, and healthcare. Innovative usages of current robotics technologies are being somewhat stranded by concerns related to social dynamics. The examples covered in this volume show some of the potential societal benefits robotics can bring and how the robots are being integrated in social environments. Despite the aforementioned concerns, a fantastic range of possibilities is being opened. The current trend in social robotics adds to technology challenges and requires R&D to think about Robotics as an horizontal discipline, intersecting social and exact sciences. For example, robots that can act as if they have credible personalities (not necessarily similar to humans) living in social scenarios, eventually helping people. Also, robots can move inside the human body to retrieve information that otherwise is difficult to obtain. The decision autonomy of these robots raises a broad range of subjects though the immediate advantages of its use are evident. The book presents examples of robotics technologies tested in healthcare environments or realistically close to being deployed in the field and discusses the challenges involved. Chapter 1 provides a comprehensive overview of Healthcare robotics and points to realistically expectable developments in the near future. Chapter 2 describes the challenges deploying a social robot in the Pediatrics ward of an Oncological hospital for simple edutainment activities. Chapter 3 focuses on Human-Robot Interaction techniques and their role in social robotics. Chapter 4 focus on R&D efforts behind an endoscopic capsule robot. Chapter 5 addresses experiments in rehabilitation with orthotics and walker robots. These examples have deep social and economic relations with the Healthcare field, and, at the same time, are representative of the R&D efforts the robotics community is developing.

This book asks whether there exists an essence exclusive to human beings despite their continuous enhancement - a nature that can serve to distinguish humans from artificially intelligent robots, now and in the foreseeable future. Considering what might qualify as such an essence, this volume demonstrates that the abstract question of 'essentialism' underpins a range of social issues that are too often considered in isolation and usually justify 'robophobia', rather than 'robophilia', in terms of morality, social relations and legal rights. Any defence of human exceptionalism requires clarity about what property(ies) ground it and an explanation of why these cannot be envisaged as being acquired (eventually) by AI robots. As such, an examination of the conceptual clarity of human essentialism and the role it plays in our thinking about dignity, citizenship, civil rights and moral worth is undertaken in this volume. What is Essential to Being Human? will appeal to scholars of social theory and philosophy with interests in human nature, ethics and artificial intelligence.

The book investigates digitalisation in care for older people by giving insight into service users' and professionals' opportunities to digital agency in the context of European welfare states. With a focus on service users and providers experiences of digital care, the contributions address the manifold and often contradictory consequences of active ageing policies and innovation programmes. To assess digital agency of older people, ageism and co-creation in the innovation processes as well the use of digital platforms are addressed, while care professionals' digital agency is examined through empirical cases that focus on the interaction between human and non-human actors in long-term care services, the temporality and spatiality of care, and the organisational requirements for successful implementation of digital technologies. From a variety of conceptual and theoretical viewpoints, the chapters provide a comprehensive and timely overview of ways to address the phenomena of ageing and digitalisation. The book provides critical vantage points to academic readership, health and social care professionals, policymakers, other stakeholders as well as the general audience on the effects of digitalisation in care for older people.

This book predicts the decline of today's professions and describes the people and systems that will replace them. In an Internet society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others, to work as they did in the 20th century. The Future of the Professions explains how 'increasingly capable systems' -- from telepresence to artificial intelligence -- will bring fundamental change in the way that the 'practical expertise' of specialists is made available in society. The authors challenge the 'grand bargain' -- the arrangement that grants various monopolies to today's professionals. They argue that our current professions are antiquated, opaque and no longer affordable, and that the expertise of their best is enjoyed only by a few. In their place, they propose six new models for producing and distributing expertise in society. The book raises important practical and moral questions. In an era when machines can out-perform human beings at most tasks, what are the prospects for employment, who should own and control online expertise, and what tasks should be reserved exclusively for people? Based on the authors' in-depth research of more than ten professions, and illustrated by numerous examples from each, this is the first book to assess and question the relevance of the professions in the 21st century.

Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends, and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But this relentless connection leads to a deep solitude. MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues that as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. Based on hundreds of interviews and with a new introduction taking us to the present day, Alone Together describes changing, unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, and families.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the human dimension of social robots by discussing both transnational features and national peculiarities. Addressing several issues that explore the human side of social robots, this book investigates what a social robot is and how we might come to think about social robots in the different areas of everyday life. Organized around three sections that deal with Perceptions and Attitudes to Social Robots, Human Interaction with Social Robots, and Social Robots in Everyday Life, it explores the idea that even if the challenges of robot technologies can be overcome from a technological perspective, the question remains as to what kind of machine we want to have and use in our daily lives. Lessons learned from previous widely adopted technologies, such as smartphones, indicate that robot technologies could potentially be absorbed into the everyday lives of humans in such a way that it is the human that determines the human-machine interaction. In a similar way to how todays information and communication technologies were initially designed for professional/industrial use, but were soon commercialized for the mass market and then personalized by humans in the course of daily practice, the use of social robots is now facing the same revolution of domestication. In the context of this transformation, which involves the profound embedding of robots in everyday life, the human aspect of social robots will play a major part. This book sheds new light on this highly topical issue, one of the central subjects that will be taught and studied at universities worldwide and that will be discussed widely, publicly and repeatedly in the near future.

Davison, D.P. (2021) "Hey robot, what do you think?": How children learn with a social robot. University of Twente

Dickinson, H., Smith, C., Carey, N. and Carey, G. (2018) Robots and the delivery of care services: What is the role for government in stewarding disruptive innovation? Melbourne: ANZSOG. https://www.anzsog.edu.au/resource-library/research/robots-and-the-delivery-of-care-services

European Parliamentary Research Service (2019) What if technologies replaced humans in elderly care? [At a glance. Scientific foresight: What if?] European Parliament https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2019/634449/EPRS_ATA(2019)634449_EN.pdf

Nourbakhsh, I. (2013). Robot futures. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.

Schadenberg, B.R. (2021) Robots for Autistic Children: Understanding and Facilitating Predictability for Engagement in Learning. University of Twente

Share, P. & Pender, J. (2021) ‘Sealing the deal? Irish caregivers’ experiences of Paro, the social robot’, in Hirvonen, H. et al (eds) Digital transformations in care of older people: Critical perspectives.

Zaga, C. (2021) The Design of Robothings: Non-Anthropomorphic and Non-Verbal Robots to Promote Children’s Collaboration Through Play. University of Twente

Podcasts

Bell, G. (2017) 2017 Boyer Lectures: Fast, smart and connected: What is it to be human, and Australian, in a digital world. Australian Broadcasting Commission [podcast series] http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/series/2017-boyer-lectures/8869370

Interactions Conversation ‘Social robots and the uncanny valley’
https://www.interactions.com/podcasts/social-robots-and-the-uncanny-valley/

Other online sources

Robohub.org

Fictional accounts

Amos, M. & Page, R. (eds) (2014) Beta life: Stories from an A-life future. Manchester: Comma Press.

Asimov, I. I robot and others in his ‘robot’ series [various dates and publishers]

Ishiguro, K. (2021) Klara and the sun. New York: Knopf.

McEwen, I. (2019) Machines like me. London: Vintage.

Films/TV series

Robot and Frank [film]

Her [film]

I am Mother [film]

Humans [TV series]

‘Be right back’ se2 ep1 of Black Mirror [TV series]