Hospital Beds, Robot Priests and Huggables:: A (Fictional) Review of Commercially Available Care Robots

Taking a current critique of predominant visions of care robotics about 20 years into the future, in this paper, we imagine a world in which robotic technologies have become the predominant mode of care and outline how this came to be. Based on ethnographic experience in care homes and knowledge of robotics, we have developed fictional robots for possible future care scenarios. We describe six facets of caregiving that are rarely discussed in the current discourse about robots: recovery & rehabilitation, death & palliative care, bereavement & remembrance, growth & development, transcendent experiences and intimacy & sexuality. By doing so, we pose the question if and how we could integrate them into our view on technology in care. This fictional review highlights blind spots of current endeavors and thereby this paper contributes new directions for research and design.

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