ABSTRACT

In this article, we contribute to robot geographies by developing the idea of robotic ‘liveliness’ in the context of their increased use during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our framing draws on new materialism, and builds the idea of liveliness by considering robots’ agential capacities in three different ways: as apparently autonomous technologies; as inorganic and mechanical bodies; and as perpetually unfinished and contingent things. We examine a range of examples of their deployment during the pandemic to speculate on the potential for robots to emerge as ‘caring subjects’ via this notion of liveliness, and argue that it offers an approach that can contribute to critiques about their use in ‘caring’ roles, an application which is rapidly developing in the area of social robotics. We contend that this claim to ‘care’ within robotics is one reason why exploration and framing of their liveliness is needed.

摘要

在本文中，我们通过在 COVID-19 大流行期间增加使用机器人的背景下发展机器人“活力”的概念，为机器人地理做出贡献。我们的框架借鉴了新的唯物主义，并通过以三种不同的方式考虑机器人的代理能力来构建活力的概念：显然是自主技术；作为无机和机械体；并且作为永远未完成和偶然的事情。我们研究了在大流行期间部署它们的一系列示例，以推测机器人通过这种活力概念成为“关怀对象”的潜力，并认为它提供了一种方法，可以有助于批评它们在“关怀”中的使用'角色，一个在社交机器人领域迅速发展的应用程序。