Robots, androids, cyborgs, automata, invade the contemporary era and offer new ideas for philosophical and anthropological consideration. The issue of human-machine fusion and human potentization is a natural conclusion of the search for the interaction between robotics and law. Robotics is, in fact, one of the most powerful technological means to achieve the growth of human capacities, which is carried out through the implant of artifacts in the body or, from the most radical and futuristic perspectives, through the abandonment of the body and the continuation of the personality in an artificial support. The healthcare and social healthcare sector are one of the scenarios for the spread of robotic innovation, which counts among its acquisitions with surgical robots currently implemented in hospitals, and among its most promising objectives, still being tested. In the current situation, the implementation of advanced prostheses and robotic exoskeletons is aimed at efficiently helping people affected by a motor disability or to make the movements of the elderly easier and safer. Multiple investigations show that these robots are useful to improve the quality of life of children and adults in hospitals and nursing homes, to stimulate learning, to develop social skills in people with autism spectrum disorders or to enhance and facilitate therapy of people with some mental or physical disability. However, due to various ethical problems and social doubts concerning this issue, experiments are still on-going in order to get all the answers that, as of today, are still lacking in robotics of the social healthcare sector.
In light of this, this essay will discuss the role of robotics in social healthcare. It will begin by describing how robots can be used in social healthcare for the more vulnerable in the community, and then the benefits and drawbacks of using robots in this sector.
A social interaction robot is a robot with the capacity to develop effective social behaviors interacting with people in different environments. The most typical fields where the social robot can be developed are leisure, education or social welfare purposes. Over the years, the future trend with regard to robots, has gone from being simple industrial manipulators to take on new tasks in different sectors, such as the social healthcare among others. The advances and researches of the last years, lead us to discover the different tasks that a robot can exercise in social healthcare for the more vulnerable in the community. Robotic technology in social healthcare is been introduced with the aim of improving the lives of the elderly by reducing senior citizen´s dependence on the people that look after them, for example, (Sharkey A and Sharkey N, 2012. Page 9) or by increasing the relationship between social ties and the health of elderly people. (Wada K and Shibata T, 2006. Page 11). Robots such as “My Spoon”, an automatic feeding robot, and Sanyo, an electric bathtub robot that automatically washes and rinses, are used, nowadays, with patients with mobility problems or simply with older people in order to grant a certain independence and privacy to the patients allowing them to do tasks such as eating or bathing with the simple help of the robot. (Sharkey A and Sharkey N, 2012. Page 7). Furthermore, apart from the elderly, the social healthcare robots are also used for children in order to increase socialization and reduce loneliness. (Banks, M.R et al. 2008, page 1). AIBO (Sony Corporation, Tokyo, Japan), a robotic dog, has been used in a pediatric ward and in a care house with patients with dementia for the past few years with the purpose of improving the interaction between children (specially with autistic children) and the elderly. In the research focused mainly on the psychological and physiological effects of robots’ therapy on people, we have studied the role of Paro, a seal type mental commit robot, which is capable of changing social ties between the residents of the care house and bringing psychological and physiological improvements to the residents. (Wada K and Shibata T, 2006. Page 12). However, the involvement of robotic technology in social healthcare has led to the implementation of doubts and ethical problems that today have still not been solved. This is why the benefits and the drawbacks of using robots in this sector are going to be studied in the next section.
The use of robots has increased considerably around the world, especially in East Asia, the United States and Europe. This increase in the use of robotic technology in the field of social healthcare is due to the improvements and contributions given to the users of the robots: from the elderly in a care house to children with social problems. The use of robotics decreases loneliness among patients in nursing homes or in hospitals, improving (through these robots) their communication between themselves or with the outside world (family, friends …). Several investigations suggest that a long and intense social network provides great results against the effects of aging. In one study, Saczynskil et al. emphasizes that communication reduces the risk of dementia by reducing stress (reducing stress-producing hormones such as corticosteroids). In short, physical activity as well as social activity helps improve and maintain health. (Sharkey A and Sharkey N, 2012. Page 8). A study from Hamamatsu University found that AAT (Animal Assisted Therapy) with AIBO, the robot dog used in nursing houses and hospitals, improved the social ties of the patients, and reduced loneliness and other health related quality of life measures. ((Banks, M.R et al. 2008, page 1). Also, the increase of density of the social networks was proved with PARO, a seal type metal commit robot, especially for robot therapy, used at pediatric hospitals. The results showed that the use of Paro improved the moods of the patients allowing them to be more communicative and social. The aims of these researches with these two robots are to change social ties between the residents of the care house and to prove that these robots bring psychological and physiological improvements to the residents. (Wada K and Shibata T, 2006. Page 12). At the same time, it is still possible that robotic technology is utilized in such a way as to improve the lives of the elderly. Robots are introduced with the aims of reducing senior citizens’ dependence on people, increasing their autonomy and helping with some of the daily tasks involved in eldercare. By introducing robots like “M y Spoon”, a feeding robot, Sanyo, an electric bathtub robot (that helps increase the sense of privacy, independence and quality of life) or a robot wheelchair (which improves the sense of control over the environment and reduce the occurrence of distressing situations), the elderly lifestyle and welfare could improve because it is unfortunately the case that human carers do not always treat them with sufficient respect for their human rights. (Sharkey A and Sharkey N, 2012. Page 7-9).
However, the normative and theoretical approaches to ethics of healthcare robotics such as Kantian ethics, phenomenology, attention ethics, critical theory and utilitarianism, have helped to highlight the disadvantages of the robotics in social assistance that nowadays, mark a very important point when it comes to the study of the elderly living conditions. The replacement of human carers and the implication of robots for the quality of care have cause the loss of many jobs and the withdrawal of “warm” and “human” care from the care process.