Article Summary by Mark Paterson
Unlike AI, smart speakers, or industrial robots, the way social robots look, how they appear and interact with us, really matters because social robots are specifically made to work with people. There are engineers with good intentions who are designing robots to assist people. These assistive robots are designed to help children and adults with autism, older adults with dementia, people that need help with feeding, and so on. Disability robotics, that is, the robots designed to assist those with disabilities, is going to be an increasingly large market worldwide.
One problem at the moment is that the way these robots are designed—how their bodies are shaped, how their outer surface or ‘skin’ appears, and even how they move—follows ideas that are derived from historically embedded imaginations of artificial people from European culture, stretching back from Greek myths, classical Roman poetry, nineteenth century novels, and early twentieth century plays and films. Most existing robots, apart from robots in Japan and Korea, have been designed in their image. This has been called the ‘engineered imaginary’. Over the past few years, a number of researchers have noticed that most robots seem to look white and able-bodied. This does not reflect the complex social reality of those who need the help of robots, where increasingly our society is becoming diverse in terms of racial identity and both visible and nonvisible needs and disabilities. So why aren’t robots designed to look, move, and interact in more inclusive ways? Ultimately, I ask: how can robots be made to include *everyone* so they can truly help all kinds of people?
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