Striving for Presence on a Hospital Ward: Phenomenology and Re-Embodiment for a Nurse-Operated Telepresence Robot

We explore the case study of Välkky, a full body teleoperated humanoid robot which was deployed in a Finnish hospital ward. Bringing phenomenology in dialogue with STS scholarship, we draw from Lipp’s conceptualization of a “robot drama”, along with B gowker and Star’s theorization of “infrastructural inversion” in order to critically examine the phenomenological experiences of nurses trained to teleoperate Välkky to deliver care at a distance. Through our discussion we explore what we term ‘experiential care infrastructures’. These phenomenological aspects of care delivery remain tacit, invisible, and further, foundational to infrastructures of care in clinical spaces. Through exploring experiential care infrastructures within robot dramas, we argue that the development of assistive telepresence robots must explicitly consider the affective and experiential dimensions of care in how robots are designed and deployed, especially when considering how clinicians experience ‘presence’, or its lack, when using telepresence technologies.