Robots – Digitizing Life

Inbjudan till att delta i studien: ‘Utvecklingen av en personlig sällskapsrobot’

Är du vuxen som är 65 år eller äldre? Är du intresserad av sociala robotar och vill ta del av utvecklingen av en personligt sällskapsrobot? Kom och ta del av denna unika möjlighet att uppleva Furhat, världens mest avancerade sociala robot.

Forskningsprojektet ‘Personlig sällskapsrobot inom långtidsvården av äldre’ undersöker möjligheterna att använda sociala robotar för att ge socialt stöd till äldre vuxna i deras hem, för att minska upplevelsen av ensamhet. Roboten kommer att lära sig av samtal med användare och komma ihåg dem för att anpassa framtida samtal. Vi är intresserade av hur äldre vuxna upplever samtalet med sociala robotar, och vilken typ av samtal äldre vuxna anser som meningsfullt.

Vi söker äldre vuxna från 65 år som kan delta i studien. Studien kommer att ske den 6 och 8 mars kl. 10-12 och 14-16 på KTH Campus Digital Futures (Osquars backe 5). Deltagande inkluderar:

Du kommer att se videor av sociala robotar i olika vardagssituationer
Du kommer att bli frågad vilken typ av konversation du skulle vilja ha med en robot i dessa situationer
Du kommer att ha ett kort samtal (5 min) med en robot
Du kommer att bli frågad om dina upplevelser av att ha samtalet med roboten

Sammantaget tar dessa två moment ca 2 h.

Alla vuxna som är 65 år eller äldre är välkomna att delta. Inga förkunskaper om robotar behövs för att delta. Vi bjuder på fika och ett presentkort för ditt deltagande.

Om du är intresserad av att delta kan du svara på denna inbjudan genom att skicka “Ja” tillsammans med ditt namn, vilka dagar och tider du är tillgänglig till sannaku@kth.se eller 070-2672 422.

Ditt deltagande bidrar till kunskap om fördelarna med denna teknik för äldre vuxna, och du får möjlighet att påverka framtida lösningar. Samtidigt får du en inblick i den pågående teknikutvecklingen som handlar om robotar och artificiell intelligens.

Deltagandet är helt frivilligt och du kan välja att avbryta ditt deltagande i studien när som helst. Din integritet kommer att respekteras, och ingen person kommer att kunna identifieras från det publicerade materialet. All information om dig är helt och hållet anonymiserad.

Med vänlig hälsning,

Bahar Irfan
Postdoktor vid Digital Futures
Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, KTH
Avdelningen för Tal, Musik och Hörsel
Email. birfan@kth.se
Tel. +46 727805162

Sanna Kuoppamäki
Biträdande universitetslektor, PhD
Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, KTH
Institutionen för Medicinsk Teknik och Hälsosystem
Email. sannaku@kth.se
Tel. +46 702672422

Gabriel Skantze
Professor i Talkommunikation och Talteknologi
Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, KTH
Avdelningen för Tal, Musik och Hörsel
Email. skantze@kth.se
Tel. +46 733266669

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.

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

Why is social uptake of interactive robots lagging behind in Europe?

The European Commission is funding INBOTS – Inclusive Robotics for a Better Society – with the purpose to create a community hub that can bring together experts to debate and create a responsible research and innovation paradigm for robotics. Work package 6 has the responsibility to find out how to promote acceptance and social uptake among Europeans. The first thing we did was to create a picture of what the uptake and use of robots look like in Europe. With data from Eurostat and best practices collected from the 25 Partners from 12 European countries including public groups and end-suers, legal authorities, businesses, industry, academia and policy makers, see more at: http://inbots.eu/the-consortium/.

So, what do we know about the social uptake of robots in Europe? Well, not much but we know where the gaps and weaknesses are. First statistics is insufficient statistics since it is limited to 15-64 years old and presented at a high aggregated level. This means that children and old people are excluded!

However, the comprehensive social uptake of ICTs, can be expected to also nurture acceptance and social uptake of interactive robots. Today 83% of European citizens and 85% of European households access Internet every day.

When it comes to the uptake in different sectors it is clear that social care, especially to meet the needs and demands from Ageing populations is lagging behind. Industry is at the leading edge, having been involved in robotizing from several decades. Still user acceptance is not optimal. Also, logistics and rescue activities is at the leading edge but have more to with for when it comes to robot-human collaboration. The same goes for education which is a promising area according to the eCraft2Learn project. The use of interacive robots in education activities is proven to improve cognitive skills, social and scientific skills. The barriers for further development are lack of supporting equipemnt such as a curriculum and knowledge among teachers. Interactive robots in health care is on the one hand succesful in terms of rehabilitation and powered exoskeletons to support stroke victims and other disabilities and to assist surgery. On the other hand, looking at social care it is a slow uptake despite of big investments and great expectations. It has to be considered startling that the uptake is so low given the large investments made in research and development, both at European and national level, to meet an aging population. More than 1 billion euros was invested in the previous framework program and continue to do so in Horizon 2020. Why is this?

Well, we can see several explanations. One explanation may be that there is a big difference between implementing technology in industry and in the elderly. In the industry today, according to McKinsey 2017, you can automate almost everything while it is far from obvious in the care sector, it is estimated that about 36% can be automated there. Another explanation may be that elderly care is a sector of low status populated by women who do a good job but far from always well paid. The variation is large in Europe and is related to each country’s welfare policy. There are also other posible explanations and challenges. This is what we are working on now.

We will try to see if we can come up with a helpful strategy on how buisnesses in Europe, already established in robotics, can diversify and broadening their productions and markets to include the public and the social sector. What do you think? Is that possible? How?

Britt Östlund, leader of WP6 and Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, in Stockholm