Heteromated Decision-Making: Integrating Socially Assistive Robots in Care Relationships

Abstract: Technological development continues to advance, with consequences for the use of robots in health care. For this reason, this workshop contribution aims at consideration of how socially assistive robots can be integrated into care and what tasks they can take on. This also touches on the degree of autonomy of these robots and the balance of decision support and decision making in different situations. We want to show that decision making by robots is mediated by the balance between autonomy and safety. Our results are based on Design Fiction and Zine-Making workshops we conducted with scientific experts. Ultimately, we show that robots' actions take place in social groups. A robot does not typically decide alone, but its decision-making is embedded in group processes. The concept of heteromation, which describes the interconnection of human and machine actions, offers fruitful possibilities for exploring how robots can be integrated into caring relationships.