24. Community-Robot Reconfigurations: Living and Working Amidst Autonomy
Elliott Hauser, The University of Texas at Austin; EunJeong Cheon, School of Inforamtion Studies, Syracuse University; Justin Hart, University of Texas at Austin; Swapna Joshi, Indiana University Bloomington
Posted: February 28, 2022 Accepted Languages: English/Inglés/Inglês
Living and working in community inevitably occasions experiences of the other, and automated technologies form a new kind of ‘other’ layered into these complex spaces. Phenomena of life and work amidst new technologies are studied by many disciplines. However, have we fully understood how the growth of autonomous technologies within communities is reconfiguring each? Do we have the methodological tools and access to this phenomenon to even gauge whether we understand it? Can we keep the racial, economic, political, and cultural complexity of communities in view when studying automation?
We see a lack of understanding of the ways that embodied automated systems like robots constitute an ‘other’ in the community spaces they inhabit, and the effects of this communal intra-action. There is a dearth of methods for situated and sustained study of community-situated robot interactions, and many challenges to researcher access to sites of community-embedded autonomy. This limits our collective ability to understand the harms, potentials, and evolving trajectories of communities permeated by automation.
This panel convenes researchers interested in studying long-term embedding of autonomous systems within existing communities from a variety of sociotechnical perspectives, leading towards a shared research topic of “Community-Embedded Autonomy.”
Presentations may represent a range of disciplinary backgrounds, from robotics to philosophy to architecture to anthropology, and a range of research sites, from city streets to makerspaces to factories to classrooms. We are particularly interested in submissions that identify and/or begin to address conceptual or methodological barriers to studying Community-Embedded Autonomy, and contributions that link automation in traditional computing or on the Internet to embodied automated systems embedded within in-person communities. Interventionist, restorative justice, or aesthetically oriented approaches are welcome.
