Children’s Imaginaries of Human-Robot Interaction in Healthcare

Núria Vallès-Peris, Cecilio Angulo and Miquel Domènech
Additional contact information
Núria Vallès-Peris: Department of Social Psychology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
Cecilio Angulo: Automatic Control Department, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, UPC BarcelonaTech, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Miquel Domènech: Department of Social Psychology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Barcelona, Spain

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 5, 1-18

Abstract: This paper analyzes children’s imaginaries of Human-Robots Interaction (HRI) in the context of social robots in healthcare, and it explores ethical and social issues when designing a social robot for a children’s hospital. Based on approaches that emphasize the reciprocal relationship between society and technology, the analytical force of imaginaries lies in their capacity to be embedded in practices and interactions as well as to affect the construction and applications of surrounding technologies. The study is based on a participatory process carried out with six-year-old children for the design of a robot. Imaginaries of HRI are analyzed from a care-centered approach focusing on children’s values and practices as related to their representation of care. The conceptualization of HRI as an assemblage of interactions, the prospective bidirectional care relationships with robots, and the engagement with the robot as an entity of multiple potential robots are the major findings of this study. The study shows the potential of studying imaginaries of HRI, and it concludes that their integration in the final design of robots is a way of including ethical values in it.

Keywords: imaginaries; social robots; children’s hospital; participatory process; ethics of care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/5/970/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/5/970/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:5:p:970-:d:145992

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().