| Summary: | Purpose Scandinavian research and policy surrounding aging and technology often relate to the term 'welfare technology') (Ostlund et al., 2015; Soraa et al., forthcoming) as something that "encompasses demographic developments, the restructuring of the welfare system and the expansion of the IT infrastructure" (Östlund et al., 2015). Within this term, the increase in the wellbeing of users and their trust in technology, is of high importance. In the industrial world, we continue to see an increase in aging. The proportion of people above the age of 60 will nearly double from 12% in 2015 to 22% in 2050 (World Health Organization, 2018). Additionally, we continue to see a deepening deficit of healthcare workers. This leads to several societal trends. One is that the elderly tend to live at home longer than before, due to possibilities, wishes, and the deficiency of formal healthcare. This also puts an increasing amount of demands on informal care providers, such as family members, which the elderly have to trust to deliver adequate care. Method Social robots have increasingly become the face of welfare technology. Many robots are being tested out in research settings (Fong et al., 2003), whilst some are available for commercial use. Our studies involve testing of social robots between these two levels, e.g. going through alpha and beta-testing for commercial use through public municipality programs in Norway where different barriers such as language issues and problems of trust, are identified. Results & Discussion Our findings, which build on the work of a forthcoming study (Soraa et al., forthcoming), suggest that these robots represent a socio-technical assemblage of different views on welfare technology. Robots have different embodied meanings for different types of users. Informal caregivers and their elderly parents living home alone have widely different perspectives on what functionalities social robots should have embedded. For the former, gerontechnologies often embody a sense of reassurance and security regarding their loved ones, while for the latter gerontechnologies can represent connection, care, trust and support from their offspring.
|
|---|