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Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the valuation practices and research and implementation ethics related to a real-life testing of a social robot in a Danish rehabilitation centre.

Paper long abstract:

In Denmark, health service robots and social robots are part of a political interest in welfare technological innovation and the opportunities that spring from new welfare technology to improve, rationalize, and make more efficient public health, care institutions and care for an aging population in their own homes. This paper is based on an anthropological fieldwork conducted in a municipal rehabilitation centre that is also functioning as a test centre for new welfare technology. In an experimental testing of a particular humanoid telecommunication robot several valuation practices and registers of valuing were enacted at the same time: An interdisciplinary team of researchers tested the robot for its capacities in human-robot interactions and valued the test site as a living lab; in the municipality's strategic welfare technology unit the test was the enactment of cutting-edge technology development; and the occupational therapists at the rehabilitation centre were practically implementing the robot in their therapeutic work with citizens. In the end, the worth of the robot emerged in several unanticipated ways.

Testing the humanoid robot in a real-life setting, and in the particular so-called dining situation aimed at socialising through dining, gave rise to ethical issues that the practitioners of different disciplines and professions construed in different ways. Participation in the test of course involved informed consent but the staff also raised questions of relational ethics and the subject positions that were actualized in the test setting and whether these matched the rehabilitation programme's overall objectives.