Co-Creating with Robots: Testing Knowledge and Designing Futures for Our Aging Societies

• In Event: Co-creating or Testing Scalable Societies? Test Beds and Living Labs as Emerging Innovation Policy Instruments - I

Abstract

Current research and innovation policies have been focused on how to tackle the challenges faced by our aging, human and nonhuman societies. A feared future scenario depicts a growing population becoming older, lonelier, and less independent, living in equally growing and decaying urban spaces. Against this scenario, robotic solutions are being developed and tested in experimental settings that intend to emulate realistic environments, such as “certified” test beds, or in real environments such as public caring homes and urban sewer networks. In this presentation, we will examine different projects currently or recently supported by the European Commission oriented to the development of robots that are expected to solve problems of our aging societies. The presentation will pay detailed attention to the implementation and development of co-creation initiatives oriented to the design of sewer inspection robots, comprehensive geriatric assessment robots, and service robots for assisted living. By looking at these areas of application side by side, we intend to identify how similar concerns are experienced by different communities of practice. By examining these cases, we will contribute to address the questions of how are future societies and technologies imagined and tested through standardized co-creation instruments? What are the limitations of transferring these instruments across different areas of application? And how do these imagined scenario shape how we think about our aging societies?

Authors

• Carlos Cuevas-Garcia, Technical University of Munich

• Kyriaki Papageorgiou, ESADE Business & Law School