Robots for Last Days, 2016-2017

complications in the automation of end of life care

Robots for Last Days imagines the future of robot assisted care. The work originates in an attempt to map the current state of robotic care culture with a compilation of research artifacts from Sociology, Philosophy, Engineering, Robotics, Medicine and other fields. The project produced scholarly articles as well as a script for a play that begins where the scholarhip ends.

SCENE 1

Patient X
Nurse Karl
Robot Robi
First Technician
Second Technician
A Bird

Patient X is frail and ill. There are no known treatments for his condition. The doctors have prepared him for the worst. Today might the last day of his life. Patient X is in an end of life hospice with some of the most advanced support and care facilities available to the public. Patient X ' s room is located in care unit A. It is nicely appointed. Designerly. Pleasant. There is a window facing onto a garden with large trees. Midday sunlight radiates into the room.

Nurse Karl, chief custodian of the care unit A, enters the room...

Texts
The Making of Robot Care (Transformations, 2017))
With a Robot on the Last Day (Virtual Futures, London, 2018)

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Derek Curry, Tero Karppi, Yvette Granata and Johannes Deich.