With the design "critical" (Companion Artifacts) Creates the computer scientist and cognitive researcher Selma Šabanovic (Indiana University Bloomington). She opened the online conference Robophilosophy 2020. Since 2014, this conference will take place every two years. While initially the concern was in the foreground, the importance of the humanities and social sciences for the design of social robotics, the focus has moved in the meantime, emerged the organizers Marco Nørskov and Johanna Seibt (Aarhus University) in their burial of the participants.
Braves Roboterchen: An Aibo in the contest RoboCup @ Home 2007 in Atlanta.
Now the humanities are required to show how they can support engineers in the development of culturally sustainable social robots. It does not go to the philosophy of social robotics, but philosophy for social robotics, not a court dialogue, but practical cooperation.
It is a change that also felled Šabanovic as she explained in her lecture. The change in industrial robots on social robots has fascinated them, because at once engineers and social scientists formulated very similar questions about robots. The consequence of this was the constitution of the laboratory for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) at Indiana University in 2010.
There she has ever been exploring how it is possible that these technologies shaped by industry and militar can transform into something that is grumbling around humans and helps them. The key is for you the Ko-Evolution. It’s not just about creating robots with certain skills, said Šabanovic. People also had to be cavorted to use them. It is always important to keep an eye on the reciprocal relationship of man and robots.
Practical cooperation, joint evolution
When asked how people can build a relationship with something that is completely different than you, the pets come into the game. This ratio has also developed in a common evolution in which both sides had adapted to each other. Šabanovic referred to the American feminist Donna J. Haraway, which was under 20 years after her "Manifesto for Cyborgs" (1985) also one "Companion species manifesto" (2003) published in which they worked in particular with dogs.
Thus Haraway deepened the already in the "Cyborg Manifesto" formulated thoughts that the boundaries between three hitherto separate areas are increasing troubled: People / Animal, Organism / Machine, Physical / Metaphysical. Animals like robots were, quoted Šabanovic, in the context of such theoretical considerations at the same time "Creatures presented possibilities and creatures Wilder and ordinary realitat".
Robots, who are supposed to take a similar role like pets, did not necessarily look like this look, said Šabanovic. An example of this is Paro, who designed according to the model of a robbe robot, the "Emotional Creature" mainly in the care of age and present person is used. Initially, it was planned to give paro the figure of a dog or a cat. But that was for rejection, because these animals were to familiarize users and therefore the robot was perceived as an imperfect copy.
Paro Robot Nuckle Energy at RoboCup 2013 in Eindhoven.
In a Robbe, however, such comparisons did not argue, so that users could engage in an unbiased on the interaction with the robot that responds to promises and sounds with movements and lukewarmers. New functions were developed over time. Thus, users had designed their own home for paro, similarly to the bay for a dog, and had smelled him for special tempering such as Easter or Christmas. The robot serves not only the care of individual persons, but always asked the community, encouraging people with each other. Such adaptations developed over months or even years and should suggest Šabanovic, found in the design of future robot.