4S/EASST conference_149_Robotics Innovation in Care: Ethical Considerations
Núria Vallès
Robots designed to accompany our elderly or to help people with Alzheimer; robots used in therapies with children with autism or to help them learn medication guidelines; robots to reduce the anxiety or pain of patients or to facilitate virtual assistance of hospitalized people; robots to feed or bathe people with limited mobility; robots designed to have affective and/or sexual relationships… Robotics innovation for care in daily live. We are living in an innovation framework in which development and technological application seem to have been previous or separated to the discussion on the moral, social, economic or political model that these innovations entail. Beyond usual debates regarding its alleged incorporation in daily life, and the utopian or dystopian scenarios that accompany its progressive introduction, the interaction with robots enacts controversies that require alternative forms of ethical reflection. In the same way, the ideation, design or commercialization strategies that are mobilized around this type of robots, suppose certain ways to conceptualize human-machine interactions, as well as certain ways to understand care and the role of care in our world. In these landscapes and dreamscapes, this panel has as main aim to discuss about ethical controversies that emerge (and disappear) with the development of robotics in care relations. We propose a multidisciplinary approach to this issue, from multiple and different perspectives: technological mediation, imaginaries, public controversies, risk identification…
Convened by: Núria Vallès-Peris (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona); Ludovica Lorusso (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona); Cecilio Angulo (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya); Miquel Domènech (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)