Helping-as-Work and Helping-as-Care: Mapping Ambiguities of Helping Commercial Delivery Robots

Abstract

In this paper, through two perspectives on helping robots, we bring forth a discussion on what it means for passersby to help a commercially deployed robot in public spaces. With helping-as-work perspective we raise issues around precarity and invisible labor, asking: can helping robots be considered work? and with what consequences? While helping-as-care highlights the affective, relational aspects of help, which are taken advantage of, but rarely appreciated in typical robot studies. In the concluding section of the paper, we deepen our use of the notion of ambiguity as a productive lens through which to view the helping-robots situation. We argue that it offers both novel theoretical moments and a basis for various actors to take responsibility within the socio-technical system that service robots are embedded within.