Regulation of the Use of Social Robotics in Care Settings: A Simulation

Abstract

A simulated consultative exercise on behalf of the European Commission. The topic is regulation of social robots in care settings (e.g. dementia care), currently underdeveloped in Europe. There may be a need for targeted regulation at EU, national, local or industry level; conversely, existing regulation (e.g. health and safety, product liability, medical devices standards) may be sufficient to guide practice in this emergent care field. The simulation is based on a fictional scenario and participants will develop and present their views from a specific stakeholder viewpoint. The aim is to agree on the parameters of any such future regulatory framework.

Challenges of deploying assistive robots in real-life scenarios: an industrial perspective

“…The TIAGo robot's arm was re-designed to include force control (thus enabling active compliance) and wider workspace access to manipulate objects more safely and avoid risks to humans in case of collision. A new controller for self-collision has also been developed through Whole Body Control 24 , which allows the robot to be endowed with safer control techniques to assist in the manipulation activities in unstructured home environments.…”

“…Despite the increasing efforts put into involving end-users in the design process and selecting robot features more in sync with the needs they express, it cannot be said that at this point in time, a social robot is capable of being permanently deployed in a real-world setting while performing sufficiently well over a long period of times. Unfortunately, too many open challenges still remain to achieve such an ambitious goal [23], [24].…”

Conversational User Interfaces in Smart Homecare Interactions: A Conversation Analytic Case Study

“…While these two interpretations of independence as a goal (making decisions for oneself, or doing things for oneself), are not mutually exclusive, the former-prioritizing the decisions and needs of disabled people-is clearly more empowering than the latter, which is vulnerable to paternalistic and utilitarian design and policymaking that prioritizes the apparent efficiencies and cost-savings of automation [6,12,84]. The danger of emphasizing this less empowering notion of independence is that it embeds a deficit-based medical model of disability into the technical process of user modelling.…”

A Cross-Cultural Comparison on Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Towards Artificial Agents

“…When introducing artificial agents into an intimate environment, such as in households or schools, the acceptance by the users is indispensable [ 1 ]. Over the last few decades, human–robot interaction (HRI) research is facing significant challenges in terms of the social acceptance of robots and virtual agents [ 2 ]. The most plausible explanation for this impasse lies in the interdependence between the social acceptance of artificial agents and the users’ attitudes towards those agents [ 3 ].…”