Caring Robots // Robotic Care

The use of robots in the care sector is a frequent topic of debate and a possible future scenario that is tied to different expectations. In the coming decades the percentage of elderly people in relation to the overall population will increase significantly. On one side, there is the hope that robots can help people to live an autonomous life in their familiar surroundings for as long as possible. On the other side, the idea of replacing human carers with robots raises a concern about the lack of important human interaction that may lead to the further isolation and social exclusion of people in need of care. Important questions in this context are: Which jobs can a robot reasonably do in care and which technological building-blocks do already exist or will exist in the near future? A central objective of the project is to study the possible roles robots or similar technologies can play in the complex context of care, while focusing on mobile nursing. This requires the interdisciplinary study of questions from the fields of robotics, social sciences and informatics. It is especially important to involve individuals and institutions from the practice context such as caretakers, clients, relatives, stakeholders, care homes and politicians in the project. Their experiences and concerns will strongly influence the design of the technological solutions. Over the course of the project, theoretical concepts will be designed, realized as prototypes for particular use cases and tested in real-world environments such as care homes. Finally, we want to use our results to determine concrete recommendations for what affected parties would consider a desirable, socially appropriate and technologically doable use of robotics in care. The first step for the realization of the project is a workshop where participants from the scientific and practice context discuss the question of how technology can and should change care and nursing. In an open discussion where all perspectives are valued equally, the different experts share their experiences in order to come up with possible and desirable future scenarios for robotics in care. The results of the workshop form an important basis for the concrete design of future project contents.