Núria Vallès-Peris

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya | UPC · Department of Automatic Control (ESAII)

This paper analyzes children’s imaginaries of Human-Robots Interaction (HRI) in the context of social robots in healthcare, and it explores ethical and social issues when designing a social robot for a children’s hospital. Based on approaches that emphasize the reciprocal relationship between society and technology, the analytical force of imaginar...

In this paper we analyze imaginaries about care robots using a set of interviews with roboticists. The study of imaginaries – from a notion close to that of Castoriadis’s radical imaginary – is used as a tool to unravel ethical, political and social concerns that care robots entail. From the analysis of the interviews, our results highlight that im...

In this paper, we explore how the definition of life takes on an essential character in the ethical debates around health technologies, with life thus being manufactured in the tensions and conflicts around the use of such artefacts and devices. We introduce concepts from science and technology studies (STS) to approach bioethics, overcoming the du...

En este artículo propongo la utilización de la ética de los cuidados como marco teórico y político para repensar la ‘robótica’ y la ‘inteligencia artificial’ (IA) en el ámbito de la salud. Utilizando la perspectiva teórica de los Estudios de Ciencia y Tecnología, desarrollo una aproximación a partir de la idea de continuum entre cuidados, política,...

In the scenario of growing polarization of promises and dangers that surround artificial intelligence (AI), how to introduce responsible AI and robotics in healthcare? In this paper, we develop an ethical–political approach to introduce democratic mechanisms to technological development, what we call “Caring in the In-Between”. Focusing on the mult...

The approval of the Spanish Law for the Regulation of Euthanasia in March 2021 entails a profound social change that has direct implications for professional practice at all levels of care. There is no information available about the experiences of the professionals participating in the process of implementing the law in our country, nor any guide...

The development of care robots has been accompanied by a number of technical and social challenges, which are guided by the question: “What is a robot for?” Debates guided by this question have discussed the functionalities and tasks that can be delegated to a machine that does not harm human dignity. However, we argue that these ethical debates do...

Amb el ràpid desenvolupament dels processos d’automatització, especialment amb la intel·ligència artificial (IA) i la robòtica i la seva progressiva aplicació en múltiples àmbits de la nostra vida, han proliferat també els debats sobre els efectes socials i les controvèrsies ètiques d’aquestes tecnologies. Qüestions com la llibertat, la responsabil...

Més enllà de les seves variades i desiguals condicions de vida, els nostres infants i joves han nascut i crescut en un context històric dominat per la societat digital. Amb «societat digital» no em refereixo només a una intensa presència de tecnologies digitals o a la utilització del codi binari en múltiples esferes de la nostra vida. Em refereixo...

In this paper, we analyse patients’ perspectives on the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic systems in healthcare. Based on citizens’ experiences when hospitalised for COVID-19, we explore how the opinions and concerns regarding healthcare automation could not be disassociated from a context of high pressure on the health syste...

In this paper we explore how the definition of life takes on an essential character in the ethical debates around health technologies, with life thus being manufactured in the tensions and conflicts around the use of such artifacts and devices. We introduce concepts from science and technology studies (STS) to approach bioethics, overcoming the dua...

This paper explores some issues that emerged in research about a participatory design process with children to develop a pre-prototype of a social robot for hospitalized children. Using as an anecdotic inspiration, the coincidence of the designing of two turtles as social-robot prototypes, one by roboticists and the other one by children, this chap...

Beyond the utopian or dystopian scenarios that accompany the progressive introduction of robots for care in daily environments, their use in the medical field entails controversies that require alternative forms of ethical responsibility. From this general objective, in this article we propose a series of reflections to articulate an ethical framew...

Beyond the utopian or dystopian scenarios that accompany the progressive introduction of robots for care in daily environments, their use in the medical field entails controversies that require alternative forms of ethical responsibility. From this general objective, in this article we propose a series of reflections to articulate an ethical framew...

This special issue on gender and science, brings together 10 articles that present some of the results of the study ‘Meta-analysis of gender and science research’ and its final conference ‘Beyond the leaky pipeline: Challenges for research on gender and science’, held in Brussels in October 2010. The ‘meta-analysis’ study was a project of the 7th R...

With the objective of understanding what the dynamics are that explain girls selecting less scientific-technical fields, the present paper is focused on analysing the mechanisms that contribute to the reproduction of horizontal segregation in the choice of fields of study among students during compulsory secondary education (ESO). The analysis uses...