Care Ethics and the Future of Work: a Different Voice

The discourse on the future of work should learn from a turn in philosophy that occurred in the 1980s, one that recognizes the good life towards which ethics strives can only be reached on a foundation of caring relationships (Gillian, 1982; Noddings, 1984). Care ethics recognizes that human well-being is a group project, one that involves...

A Study on Automated Receptionists in a Real-World Scenario

The commercial availability of robots and voice-operated smart devices such as Alexa or Google Home have some companies wondering whether they can replace some current human interactions by using these devices. One such area of interaction is at the reception desk. While both platforms can offer the necessary interaction features to take on...

Embodiment, presence, and their intersections

Subjective experience of human control over remote, artificial, or virtual limbs has traditionally been investigated from two separate angles: presence research originates from teleoperation, aiming to capture to what extent the user feels like actually being in the remote or virtual environment. Embodiment captures to what extent a virtual...

Feel-good robotics: Requirements on touch for embodiment in assistive robotics

The feeling of embodiment, i.e., experiencing the body as belonging to oneself and being able to integrate objects into one's bodily self-representation, is a key aspect of human self-consciousness and has been shown to importantly shape human cognition. An extension of such feelings toward robots has been argued as being crucial for...