Christoph Dukat

Robot Caregiver or Robot-Supported Caregiving?

Much has been written—not least in this journal—about the potential, the benefits, and the risks of social robotics. Our paper is based on the social constructivist perspective that what a technology actually is can be decided only when it is applied. Using as an exemplar the robot baby seal PARO, which is deployed in Germany mainly as activation therapy for elderly people with dementia, we begin by briefly explaining why it is by no means clear at the beginning of the development phase what a technology is actually going to be. Rather, this is established in the light of, and in coordination with, the context of application. We then present some preliminary results from our ongoing study of the way in which this social robot is applied by professional care workers in a nursing home for the elderly. The underlying theoretical assumption on which our study is based is that the appearance and the performative deployment of a technical artifact are interdependent. Only in combination with experiences—the experiences of others, imparted in diverse forms as knowledge, and first-hand experience of using the technology—are the design and the technical functionality of the device of relevance to its appearance, that is, to what it is regarded as being. Our video-assisted ethnographic study of persons with dementia shows that, on the one hand, PARO is deployed performatively as an occasion for communication and as an interlocutor, and, on the other, it is applied as an observation instrument.

Foundations of Trust: Contextualising Trust in Social Clouds

In this paper, we lay the foundations for a contextualisation of trust, the role it plays, and its different layers within the context of a novel paradigm: Social Cloud Computing. In a Social Cloud, trust plays a vital role as a collaboration enabler. However, trust is not trivial to define, observe, represent and analyse as precursors to understand exactly what role it plays in the enablement of collaboration. We do this through the definition of structure of a Social Cloud as a sequence of social and cognitive processes. We then survey research from the domains of computer science, economics and sociology that consider trust in online communities and exchange scenarios to illustrate the complexity of modelling trust in our scenario. Finally, we define trust within the context of a Social Cloud and identify the core components of trust to facilitate its understanding.

Künstlich begleitet. Der Roboter als neuer bester Freund des Menschen

In Anbetracht der „Social Robotics“ drangt sich die Frage nach dem sozialweltlichen Status des technischen Artefakts nachgerade unabweisbar auf. Ausgangspunkt sind deren Ankundigungen, dass Roboter an die Stelle des menschlichen Gegenubers bzw. mit diesem in Kommunikation und Interaktion treten konnen. In der Entwicklung von „artificial companions“ werden langfristige Bindungen zu Robotern in Aussicht gestellt. Aus wissenssoziologischer Perspektive erweist sich das, was avancierte (Medien-)Technik ‚ist’ und ‚kann’, als Interaktionsprodukt – dies allerdings nicht nur im Prozess der Technikgenese, sondern im Zuge des kommunikativen Handelns, in dem diese Technik be-handelt wird und Sozialbeziehungen stabilisiert. Mediatisierungsrelevant erweist sich die Frage, wie die (medien-)technischen Entwicklungen der Robotik das Medientableau erganzen, wie diese in Kernaktivitaten sozialer Welten eingeflochten werden und sich dort als Institution etablieren.

Towards the Competence of Crowdsourcees: Literature-based Considerations on the Problem of Assessing Crowdsourcees' Qualities

Today, crowd sourcing literature and platforms propose many different means of assessing and defining worker quality, reliability and trustworthiness of task solutions. Where examples include: redundant scheduling, gold standard questions, qualification tests, and employer acceptance rate. In this paper, we argue that these approaches are not ineffective, but are shortsighted, as they reveal little about the actual abilities of a worker in general. Therefore, we propose the definition of competencies for crowd sourcees as a more elaborate methodology to todays notion of qualifications and qualification tests. Furthermore, we shed some light on how the competencies of crowd sourcees could be identified and confirmed via online social media platforms.

Von der Empirie zur Postphänomenologie

Dieser Beitrag beschreibt vermutlich kein allgemeines Muster, sondern am konkreten Fall unserer Robotik-Forschung den Weg der Gewinnung „theoretischer Einsichten aus empirischer Arbeit“. Den dokumentierten Startpunkt unserer Empirie bildet ein Beobachtungsprotokoll vom 13. April 2013 uber den Einsatz eines sogenannten Personal Assistance Robot in einem Altenpflegezentrum.

Zur Wirkung von Technik

Die Ethnographie ist im Forschungsfeld der Social Robotics keine gangige Methode. Dies gilt nicht nur fur die ingenieurale Forschung und Entwicklung auf diesem Gebiet und die damit verbundenen Test- und Versuchsreihen. Auch in der sozialwissenschaftlichen Robotikforschung sind Forschungsdesigns haufig an psychologische Untersuchungsverfahren angelehnt, in denen zwar Beobachtungen die Datenbasis liefern, allerdings in einer standardisierten Logik.