Introduction: special issue—critical robotics research
Sofia Serholt, Sara Ljungblad, Niamh Ní Bhroin · AI & Society · 2021
In recent years, the design, use and study of robots in a variety of social settings has increased, ranging from therapy and care for older adults and children, to education and domestic life. The typical discourse around these devices, in both the robotics and Human–robot interaction (HRI) fields, as well as in political debates and commercial developments, is that the robotic permeation of society is somehow inevitable. Robots are predominantly viewed as engineering problems, but are usually designed to solve societal challenges (Šabanović 2010 ). A resulting concern is that alternative design perspectives and more critical perspectives of the consequences of using robots in social settings remain under-researched in HRI (Lupetti et al. 2021 ).