key: cord-0060338-hdj24frm
authors: Richert, Anja; Neef, Caterina
title: Vignette: Cobot on a Couch—Living with Robotic Companions in 2030
date: 2020-12-06
journal: Managing Work in the Digital Economy
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-65173-2_3
sha: d90298d3f6280f55e3a9e5be803c76f098e54cc2
doc_id: 60338
cord_uid: hdj24frm

This chapter tells the story of the three cooperative robots—or cobots—Ro-Bert, Pearl, and Te-Ma and their lives in the year 2030. COVID-27 and COVID-28 have once again led to a complete shutdown of public life. The cobots are hard at work trying to ease the lives of their human families, so they can safely remain in their homes. Ro-Bert and Pearl run errands, perform household duties, and assist their owners in planning their daily lives in and outside of pandemics; Te-Ma is a telemedical assistance robot that can monitor the health status of its owners and automatically send reports to their doctor. Massive technological developments like 5G networks, conversational AI, and quantum computing as well as research in the areas of social robotics and human–robot collaboration have made all this possible in the year 2030. Read on to find out what makes these three cobots such a special team.

technological developments like 5G networks, conversational AI, and quantum computing.

The clock is approaching noon as Ro-Bert is on his way back home, after having finished all of his errands. It is once again quarantine season, so his list was quite long, filled with many tasks his owners can't do by themselves without risking a possible infection. However, Ro-Bert still manages to return home before lunch.

Pearl: "Ro-Bert, there you are! I've been waiting all morning. How am I supposed to unload the dishwasher or make coffee or cook lunch if I can't walk?" Ro-Bert: "Calm down Pearl, I'm home sooner than I was planning. It's really nice being out and about without any humans in the way. Autonomous movement is so much more efficient when there are only machines around."

Pearl: "Yes, yes. Can you please fix my leg now? You know, considering you're supposed to be a social robot, you can be quite antisocial. . . ."

Social robots, often realized as humanoids, enable social interaction between humans and machines. Social interaction is essentially sharing information: This is possible between all systems that can process information and can happen in many ways. Two agents-be it humans, animals, or robots-can share their attention, social rules, memories, or even friendship, feelings, and spaces. Cooperative robots focus enormously on being adaptive to human needs and communication behavior. In times where quarterly shutdowns and quarantines are "the new normal," cobots are important for the everyday life of people. One of the breakthroughs to accept the robots' physical closeness required to perform these tasks was research results leading to the creation of a feeling of "mental closeness" between robotic systems and humans, via the use of technology-inspired happiness. Cobots and their AI can provide different socializing needs, adapting to the nature of their respective users. Thus, cobots went from simple task-fulfilling machines to equal partners, who can "do their owners good" and support social proximity and happiness in times of social distancing.

The classical pathway has been to create robotic systems that assist humans in routine tasks such as cleaning or mowing the lawn. Based on the abovementioned technological breakthroughs, cobots have taken over many tasks nowadays. There are specialists like Pearl and all-rounders like Ro-Bert. Ro-Bert's main function is to act as a personal assistant. He takes over everyday activities for his owners, from scheduling appointments to organizing errands and precautionary planning for quarantine periods. Additionally, all cobots can function as telepresence robots via their tablets, e.g., for owners with family members scattered all over Europe. With this feature, family reunions can take place regularly, even in times of both globalization and epidemics or pandemics.

It is now late afternoon. After fixing Pearl, Ro-Bert's next task was to plan everyone's activities for the upcoming days. This quarantine period had just started, so his owners were still in a good mood. But he knew it was only a matter of time before they would start going stir crazy. So he came up with schedules with different activities every day and made appointments for them to talk to their friends across town and their children, who lived in different countries. All of this work makes him think: "Sometimes I wonder what my owners would do without me. I really don't envy Pearl with her mundane tasks and her hardware problems, but she has a lot less responsibility. Meanwhile, I have to go around fixing everyone else's problems all day, when I would really love to have some time to talk to my own friends, instead of just passing by them on the street while we are both running around taking care of everyone else. Maybe I should go see Dr. PsychBot; she is supposed to really help with these moods, I mean bugs. . . a cobot on a couch. What a funny image!" While robotic assistance systems like Ro-Bert and Pearl are already well established among the general public, there were huge acceptance challenges in the past for close human-robot collaboration in other areas such as the health-care sector, e.g., with health-care assistance systems that help lift, move, place, etc. patients. However, as the rise of COVID-19 in 2020 led to many people rarely being able to leave the house for almost a year, telemedical services and robotic solutions for patient care and medical care subsequently developed very rapidly. One example is specialized cobots that have been available for the health and care sector for some time. There was a new robotic addition to the household of Ro-Bert and Pearl, recently. Te-Ma is a telemedical assistance robot, which spares its owners' visits to the doctor. Via sensor technology, Te-Ma is able to track critical biomedical data (e.g., blood pressure, stress, blood sugar, etc.) of its owner and pass it on directly to the attending doctor via an encrypted online connection. The doctor can advise the patient during telemedical consultation hours via the robot's tablet. All cobots are designed to be operated remotely by nursing staff if necessary. Thereby necessary checks of possibly helpless owners, e.g., after falling, can be performed, and in case of emergency, a rescue can be initiated.

For physiotherapy and nursing activities, there are also specialized cobots, which are provided by the health insurance companies, depending on the specific illness and therapy required. They instruct the patients on which exercises to do just like personal trainers; track the correct execution; collect behavioral data of the patient, for example, on the regularity of training, medication, and food and drink intake; and transmit this data to the nursing services and physiotherapists. The sum of all of this data is then used to optimize the activities and visits of human caregivers.

It is time for Ro-Bert to shut down all of his systems and recharge his battery as he thinks about his day. He remembers how things were when he first moved in, how stressed and overwhelmed his owners were, and how excited he was to be moving in and helping them. And even though they lead to extra work and stress for him, he is convinced that Pearl, Te-Ma, and Ro-Bert do make a good team. Ro-Bert is grateful that Pearl helps out around the house, as their owners are getting older and less independent. He is also happy that they can still talk to their children whenever they want, using either of their tablets. And he feels incredibly fortunate that Te-Ma has recently joined their household: "Te-Ma is taking care of our owners and their wellbeing so that I don't have to worry about them and they don't have to worry about each other so much anymore. Together, as a team, we are fulfilling our duties as assistive robots by making our owners' lives easier, one day at a time."

Her major research interests are socio-technical systems, among them collaborative and social robotics, digital learning and working environments, and data-driven innovation management

University of Applied Sciences. Her research is focused on the interplay between wearable healthcare sensors and social robotics to promote the independence of people in need of health-related care. She received her M.Sc