Short abstract:

I discuss preliminary findings from a project bringing technicians working on a dressing robot together with local council workers, using LEGO Serious Play to build a 3D map of their care system in order to better understand the context in which such a robot might be deployed.

Long abstract:

This paper discusses preliminary findings from a recent project, “Mapping Trustworthy Systems for RAS in Social Care”, in which we brought technicians working on an early-design stage dressing robot together with council workers involved in commissioning, managing and hands-on provision of adult care services to better understand the context in which such a robot might be deployed. The workshop utilized a live demo of the robot as part of a day-long mapping exercise using LEGO® Serious Play® in which technicians were able to observe the council workers as they built a 3D map of their service as is, and then tried to imagine how a perfected version of the robot might (or might not) be productively integrated. In this paper, I will discuss the main themes arising during this workshop and its subsequent follow-up interviews with participants. How do different conceptions of ‘trust’ and of ‘care’ – as a service, a process or an emotive relationship – inform these discussions? While roboticists tend to focus on producing trust in the robot through technical means, our research shows that for the council participants ‘trust’ was part of a process of making the user feel cared for. Rather than prioritising ‘trust’, we therefore argue (after Tronto and Bellacasa) for a framing of ‘careworthy autonomous systems’, and end by questioning how we as STS scholars might involve roboticists more deeply in these forms of far-upstream qualitative research, which are substantively different than what they are used to from the field of HRI.