Research meeting of the Science, Technology and Policy Studies section, University of Twente, with Casey Lynch, who will give a presentation followed by questions and discussion. For more information please contact Karin van der Tuin.
You are welcome!
ABSTRACT
This presentation broadly addresses the question of how socially-interactive robots deployed in the spaces of everyday life become important agents in the production of social space. Socially interactive robots potentially produce new articulations of conceived, perceived, and lived space—or representations, practices, and affective experiences of space—throughout the contingent processes of their development, deployment, and interactions. The paper draws from an ongoing collaborative, interdisciplinary research project studying the development and deployment of interactive museum tour-guiding robots on a North American university campus. The project is a collaboration among geographers, roboticists, a digital artist, and the directors/curators of two museums, and involves experimentation in the development of a tour-guiding robot with a “socially-aware navigation system” alongside ongoing critical reflection into the socio-spatial context of human-robotic interactions and their future possibilities. The paper shows how the process of robotic design and deployment are inherent to contemporary spatial politics, and conversely how conceptions of and implicit theorizations of social space are integral to robotic development. As such, social robotic development and deployment should be approached as an open process with possibilities for creative experimentation, collaboration, and alternative practices. Robots can be tools for control and commercialization, but are not exclusively so. The many contingencies, discontinuities, and limitations involved in robotic development and deployment create myriad opportunities for ethical reflection, experimentation, and collaboration in the production of robotic spaces.
Suggested Reading:
Lynch, Casey R. (2021). Artificial Emotional Intelligence and the Intimate Politics of Robotic Sociality. Space and Polity, 25(2): 184-201. DOI: 10.1080/13562576.2021.1985853 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378321000015
Casey Lynch, Science, Technology and Policy Studies, University of Twente
