Category: Ethnography

Invitation to an interdisciplinary workshop on healthcare robotics

Workshop: Robotic failures in health and social care: Improving HRI design based on empirical insights on human needs, emotions and engagement

When: November 23rd, Wednesday, 2022 (10 am – 5 pm)
Where: Digital Futures Hub at KTH Campus

Adress: Osquars Backe 5, floor 2. SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

Today, a diversity of robots are being used in many different care settings: ranging from surgical robots in hospitals to companion robots as part of care for the elderly. As robots move out of the lab and into real-world settings, they face the challenge of having to adapt to a complex and shifting environment: a challenge which is currently being tackled by roboticists through emphasizing the need for context awareness and personalisation. 

Robust design and sound engineering do not necessarily result in a high uptake of robotic systems in health and social care. In fact, many of these systems eventually fail to reach long-term user engagement, potentially because they fail to consider some of the complexities that characterizes real-world care environments; where the staff and patients ideas of what ‘good’ care entails become entangled with organisational structures and demands (e. g., patient safety, care relationship, quality of care). 

This workshop called ‘Robotic failures in health and social care: Improving HRI design based on empirical insights on human needs, emotions and engagement’ aims to provoke a discussion of robot failures in health and social care to design and implement robotic systems in health care in a practically feasible, as well as ethically sustainable, way. We invite researchers from interdisciplinary fields such as Human-Robot Interaction, social sciences, psychology and medical engineering to discuss:

    • How, and why, do robots fail when they enter real world care environments?
    • What specific aspects of care environments do roboticists have to take into account when designing robots intended to be utilized in these settings? 
    • What methods could be adopted in order to transfer and communicate empirical findings into the work of those who design and develop care robots? 

The workshop will be held on 23rd November, Wednesday, 2022 (10 am – 5 pm), in the cozy open space environment of Digital Futures Hub at KTH Campus (Osquars Backe 5, 2nd floor, Stockholm). It will consist of invited talks, networking games and directed discussions centered around the above-mentioned questions. The emphasis will be on the latter, as our aim is for all participants to be actively engaged and have the opportunity to expand their network and establish possible future collaborations. 

The event will have limited number of participants. Registration is free and can be made through the following link:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScr2VA9ZM5TaceSdnGgjtxQgiHoPJFGYptFgh8UPZyx4t3fXg/viewform

 

Programme, Wednesday 23rd November

10:00 Welcome and Introductory Words on Interactive Flow

10:10 Speed Networking Game

10:20 Idea, Experience, Failures and Critics Sharing & Q&A

        • Bipin Indurkhya, Professor of Cognitive Science, Jagiellonian University, Poland: “In-the-Wild Observations on The Role of Surprise in Child-Robot Interaction”
        • Sofia Thunberg, PhD Student in Cognitive Science, Linköping University, Sweden: “Social Robots are Not for Everyone – Differences Among End Users”
        • Maria Arnelid, PhD Student, Linköping University, Sweden &  Mikaela Hellstrand, PhD Student, KTH, CBH, Sweden: ‘Experiences and gains of utilizing an ethnographic approach when investigating care robots’
        • Arzu Guneysu Ozgur, Digital Futures Postdoctoral Fellow, KTH, RPL: “Health care professionals’ perception of robots”

11:40 Research Pitches from Attendees

12:00 Discussions on Challenges

12:45 Creating a Challenge Board

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Research pitches from attendees

14:20 Idea, Experience, Failures and Critics Sharing & Q&A

        • Hatice Gunes, Professor of Affective Intelligence and Robotics, University of Cambridge, UK, Title TBA
        • Youssef Mohamed, PhD candidate, KTH, RPL, Sweden: “Multimodal Social Robotic Systems in Healthcare“
        • Bahar Irfan, Digital Futures Postdoctoral Fellow, KTH, TMH, Sweden: “Behind the Scenes of Putting Autonomous Personal Robots in the Wild”
        • Björn Fischer, PhD, KTH, CBH, Sweden: ““Who are the robot and AI users? How business practices can perform future consumer markets“.

15:20 Fika & Networking Game

15:45 Discussions on solutions and methodologies

16.40 Ideation and Possible Collaborations

17:00 Closing and moving to dinner

18:00 Dinner

 

Organizers:

Youssef Mohamed, KTH, Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning

Mikaela Hellstrand, KTH, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Health Systems

Arzu Guneysu Ozgur, KTH, Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning

Sanna Kuoppamäki, KTH, CBH, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Health Systems

The event is funded by KTH Life Science Platform.

Ethnographic study of two robot laboratories: ideas about future technology users emerge in engineering practice.

Generally, it is often assumed that technology development activities are distinct from the use context. Now we know that, rather than distinct, users are enacted as part of ongoing technology design activities. It are precisely the practices in which engineers are engaged that shape their ideas about future users. This is the finding of our most recent ethnographic study published in the journal Social Studies of Science.

As engineers build and develop new technologies, how do they imagine future users? Considering the rapid progress and development of artificial intelligence and robotics, and growing fears surrounding their impact on future societies, this has become a pertinent question. Ideas about future users can impact how new technologies are designed and implemented in our future societies.

Engineering practices evoke user images

So, how do engineers imagine future users? To answer this question, we joined engineers working in two robot laboratories over a period of 6 months, and observed how they  developed their technologies and articulated ideas about future users. What we found is that user images and design activities are related. Engineers develop ideas about possible use scenarios as these ideas are evoked by specific design activities; or – how we call them – ‘image-evoking activities’.

To better understand this phenomenon, we need to look at the detailed work that is done in the laboratories: As engineers go about their everyday work, they engage in different sub-actions, such as writing a software code, testing how codes affects the robot’s movements, or sharing these insights within the online community. Together, these sub-actions form broader activities, each with its own goal. We found four such activities from our observations:  to distinguish technology work from other types of work,  to expand what is technologically possible,  to universalize the applicability of the developed technologies, and  to make robots human-like.

With ‘image-evoking’, we mean that each of these activities evoked a set of use scenarios. For example, universalizing applicability caused the engineers to imagine scenarios of users in diverse industries, and making robots human-like came with images of robots replacing humans, in a variety of settings. To think about this breadth and variety of possible use scenarios available to engineers, it may be helpful to envision how these different scenarios form a ‘user image landscape’, with some images far in the background, some blurred and some rather self-evident.

How can this help technology development?

Well, technologies may fail if they do not correspond to the users’  wishes or desires. So, there is a need for suitable user images, to ensure that millions of investments into robotics and artificial intelligence do not go to waste. Our study speaks to this need. Through developing a better understanding of how users are imagined in practice, we are now beginning to learn how and where we can improve these images; and better tailor them to our needs and expectations.

Crucially, our findings suggest that we need to be more aware of the locales in which technologies are constructed. We have shown how ideas about future users are created in engineering practice, and these can have an impact on how future technologies are constructed. This means that the user is created within the laboratory, as part of ongoing design practices.  So, if we are to change certain practices or ways of imagining future users, we need to consider that our interventions, like user involvement or participatory design, need to fit into the practical realities in the laboratories. They need to connect to what the engineers’ everyday work looks like.

Everyday engineering in robot laboratories

What are the future roles for robots and humans, based on our study?

In our case, multiple future use scenarios became apparent: robots in different industries, in factories, in hospitals, in care facilities. Robots replacing human work, or parts of what humans do at the moment. These all seem possible future scenarios.  However, the impact of robots and increased automatization on our future society is the subject of ongoing debates. Millions of jobs might be threatened, but robots could also function as providing assistance or creating new jobs.

In this context, our study shows that there is a lot to learn by studying the context in which robots are built and created. And it implies that we do have to ask ourselves: What roles do we really want for robots and artificial intelligence to fulfill? Do we want them to replace humans? What are our societal needs? Only if we become clearer about our own desires can robot engineers possibly attend to them.

Robot for the future

You found this discussion interesting? Please share your opinion in the comments below, or contact me.  I am looking forward to hear your ideas!

You can find our original research article published online here for free

Björn Fischer is a PhD student in Technology and Health at KTH in Sweden. His current research focuses on science and technology studies, with a particular interest in engineering and design practices, and the link between technology and use. He is particularly concerned with understanding how technologies can be developed to suit the needs of older people. 
Email: bjorfisc@kth.se