Outcomes
Our research objectives for this project were as follows:
1) Carry out a critical review of the TAS literature to interrogate inclusion/exclusion of disabled young people.
2) Adopt co-production methods to explore disabled young people's perspectives on TAS.
3) Draw on the practices of makerspaces to explore the aspirations of disabled young people in relation to TAS.
4) Deliver knowledge exchange activities that communicate disabled young people’s perspectives and aspirations in relation to TAS
Project Infographic Summary
Blog posts
Our project launch!
On building trust: co-producing what it means to be trustworthy
https://tas.ac.uk/on-building-trust-co-producing-what-it-means-to-be-trustworthy/
'Do you need a designer?': Centring co-researchers as designers and makers from Reimagining TAS
Events
End of Project Research Celebration Event, Thursday 27th April 2023
As a team, we are working at creating an end of project research celebration event. This will be hosted and led by our co-researchers at Greenacre School.
Possibilities of Co-production, Wednesday 26th April 2023
As a team, we are coming together as the project comes to an end to reflect on the possibilities of co-production. We will reflect on what worked well, what challenges we encountered, what makes for good interdisicplinary research, what we've learnt about TAS and importantly, what is next! We'll also be joined by Professor Geert Van Hove (University of Ghent). We'll also be launching our project animation! For more information, please visit: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ihuman/events
Navigating Ethical Landscapes Symposium, Wednesday 29th March 2023
Dr Lauren White (iHuman and Sheffield Methods Institute) and Dr Kirsty Liddiard will bring together two projects 'Living Life to the Fullest' and 'Reimagining TAS with DYP' to discuss co-production, disability research and participatory ethics in practice. The presentation forms part of a symposium where speakers and attendees are invited to think beyond insitutional ethics and to consider the various ethical landscapes that researchers navigate across a range of research projects.
Sheffield Robotics (University of Sheffield), December 2022
Dr Lauren White (iHuman and School of Education) and Harry Gordon (school partner, Greenacre School) showcased our project, 'Reimagining Trustworthy Autonomous Systems with Disabled Young People' at the Sheffield Robotics Network. Our presentation was centred on showcasing the importance of co-production methods to those in the Sheffield Robotics Community. In our presentation, we talked through all of our co-produced findings and research activities and highlighted how our student co-researchers have become makers of technology through working with maker{futures} and methods of co-production. We presented alongside fellow projects in the TAS Hub Network (Dr Dave Cameron on his project 'Imagining Robotic Care' and Prof Sanja Dogramadzi on her project 'TAS Node in Resillience Project') and the presentations were followed by networking activities.
TAS RRI event (London), October 2022
Dr Lauren White (iHuman and School of Education) attended the TAS Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Event, held in London in October 2022. The goal of the event was for the wider TAS community to learn more about TAS hub pump priming projects, with a dedicated RRI focused workshop. Lauren presented a project update on 'Reimagining Trustworthy Autonomous Systems with Disabled Young People', where equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and RRI are embedded and drive our research agenda. In our presentation, we detailed our methods of co-production with disabled young people in shaping and reimagining understandings of TAS. We documented our achievements to date and our aspirations for the future with outputs designed with EDI and RRI in mind.
TAS Health and Social Care Conference (University of York), June 2022
Dr Lauren White (iHuman and School of Education) and Harry Gordon (school partner, Greenacre School) attended the TAS hub Health and Social Care event. This event was organised by the UKRI TAS Node in Resilience on behalf of the UKRI TAS Programme, the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems in Health and Social Care Workshop brought together health and social care practitioners, researchers, developers, operators, end users, policy makers and regulators, to discuss challenges and solutions for the trustworthy adoption of autonomous systems in health and social care. Together, they presented our project 'Reimagining Trustworthy Autonomous Systems with Disabled Young People'. In our presentation, we outlined plans for our project workshops where we have sought to tackle questions of equality, diversity and inclusion as they relate to TAS, together. We detailed our aspirations for the project and beyond, and what we believe to be our contributions to understanding TAS in health and social care contexts.
Animation
Publications
Our Critical Literature Review is available to view OPEN ACCESS via the following link: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/b6vn2/
To cite:
White, L., Picardi, C., Paterson, C., Towsend, B., Wang, J., Buxton, A., … Calinescu, R. (2023, March 18). Trustworthy Autonomous Systems and Disabled Young People: A Critical Literature Review. Retrieved from osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/b6vn2
Research Informed Teaching
Case Study of Participatory Research with Children and Young People (Undergraduate module EDU305, School of Education, University of Sheffield)
In March 2023, Prof Dan Goodley and Dr Lauren White contributed the TAS project to the module, ‘Participatory Research with Children and Young People’. The project acted as a case study for students to critically reflect upon how principles of participatory research are embedded, the methodological and ethical issues involved in research that strives to centre and engage children and young people as active contributors in the research project and to consider critical questions around participatory research methods and design.
Case Study of Working Beyond Disciplines (PGT module SMI613, Sheffield Methods Institute (SMI), University of Sheffield)
In March 2023, Dr Lauren White contributed to reflections from the TAS project to the module, ‘Working Beyond Disciplines’. The project acted as a case study for exploring the affordances, challenges and tensions of interdisciplinary working across the sciences. Further to this, Lauren provided reflections on the points of alignment across disciplines and tips for students who are embarking on interdisciplinary projects in the future.
Robotic Reflections
Disabled young people are imagined to be end users of TAS, but they are frequently excluded from design. We’re challenging this through co-production. Our research is driven by a team of co-researchers who contribute in a diversity of ways.
When TAS and disability are considered together, it is often framed as assistive. Together, we talked about how TAS might evoke joy, laughter and fun. Through co-production, we explored how TAS might support hobbies like boxing, dancing and doing makeup!
Trust is a key factor within conversations on TAS. But what does it mean? Who, or what, is involved? Through co-production, we considered trust and this big question: You can trust a dog to follow an instruction, but can you trust a cat?
Slow(er) robots? Robots can assist with personal care such as dressing. But to trust tech to do this, it’s important that it adapts to meet diverse bodies and minds. Robots might need to go slow(er), pace and pause to be assistive and collaborative in people’s everyday lives.
Throughout our workshops, we have highlighted the importance of meeting the designers and makers when it comes to trusting technology and trustworthy autonomous systems. Knowing who is working behind the scenes and being able to be part of conversations with them is important!
In our project, we explored what features may make TAS more inclusive. However, our needs, hopes and desires for TAS are all different. This means that there is no one route into accessible TAS. We must adopt collaborative ways of working in designing tech for our future.
We explored how TAS might assist in providing care and companionship, situated within established personal relationships. Elicited by our interactions with a robot, we explored an example robotic animal with sensory capabilities to offer assistance in everyday life.
Co-defining TAS? In our project, we have sought to explore the definition of TAS together. This includes finding meaningful & accessible ways of understanding & defining TAS with everyday examples. We believe this is important for the TAS agenda to be equitable & inclusive.
In our project, we teamed up with @Maker_Futures who led important workshops in assisting our young co-researchers to move from users of technology to makers. Through the process, our co-researchers also came to see themselves as designers that can help out other teams too!
In our project, we teamed up with @Maker_Futures who led important workshops in assisting our young co-researchers to move from users of technology to makers. Makerspaces was also another example of co-production where our young co-researchers coproduced designs, knowledge and prototypes!
Social and Economic Impacts
Social, economic, policy and environmental impacts of those outputs
Project website
Reimagining TAS with Disabled Young People website. Available to access here
Open Access literature review
Insights into co-production methodology
We have produced multi-modal, annotated, in-depth and qualitative insights into the empirical work of our project for both WP1 and WP2 - in order to share insights with researchers in the TAS field and beyond.
Infographic
https://e.issuu.com/embed.html?d=disabled_yp_as_co-researchers_infographic&u=niftyfoxcreative
Animation
https://vimeo.chttps://vimeo.com/818619464om/818619464
Blogs
https://tas.ac.uk/on-building-trust-co-producing-what-it-means-to-be-trustworthy/
External facing events
Navigating Ethical Landscapes Symposium (University of Sheffield), March 2023
Dr Lauren White (iHuman and Sheffield Methods Institute) and Dr Kirsty Liddiard brought together two projects 'Living Life to the Fullest' and 'Reimagining TAS with DYP' to discuss co-production, disability research and participatory ethics in practice. The presentation formed part of a symposium where speakers and attendees were invited to think beyond institutional ethics and to consider the various ethical landscapes that researchers navigate across a range of research projects.
Sheffield Robotics (University of Sheffield), December 2022 - Dr Lauren White and Harry Gordon gave an invited presentation on our project at the Sheffield Robotics Showcase to ~80 members of research staff across the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University. Our presentation was centred on emphasising the importance of co-production methods to those in the Sheffield Robotics community. In our presentation, we talked through all of our co-produced findings and research activities and highlighted how our student co-researchers have become makers of technology through working with Maker{futures} and methods of co-production. We presented alongside fellow projects in the TAS Hub Network (Dr Dave Cameron on his project 'Imagining Robotic Care' and Prof Sanja Dogramadzi on the 'TAS Node in Resilience' and Prof Rob Hierons on the ‘TAS node in Verifiability’). The presentations were followed by networking activities.
TAS and DYP In Denmark, November, 2022
Dan Goodley joined a panel of speakers - including disabled activists, architects and inclusive designers - and shared a keynote lecture at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen on November 3rd). The event was hosted by Bevica Fonden and provided an opportunity for Dan to share ideas from a new project (coming in 2023) entitled ‘Disability Matters)’ - which argues that all disciplines across the human, social and natural sciences would benefit from foregrounding disability as the driving subject of inquiry.
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ihuman/news/disability-matters-denmark
TAS RRI event (London), October 2022 - Dr Lauren White attended the TAS Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Event, held in London in October 2022. The goal of the event was for the wider TAS community to learn more about TAS hub pump priming projects, with a dedicated RRI focused workshop. Lauren presented a project update where equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and RRI are embedded and drive our research agenda. In our presentation, we detailed our methods of co-production with disabled young people in shaping and reimagining understandings of TAS. We documented our achievements to date and our aspirations for the future with outputs designed with EDI and RRI in mind.
TAS Health and Social Care Conference (University of York), June 2022 - Dr Lauren White and Harry Gordon attended the TAS hub Health and Social Care event. This event was organised by the UKRI TAS Node in Resilience on behalf of the UKRI TAS Programme, the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems in Health and Social Care Workshop brought together health and social care practitioners, researchers, developers, operators, end users, policy makers and regulators, to discuss challenges and solutions for the trustworthy adoption of autonomous systems in health and social care. We outlined plans for our project workshops where we have sought to tackle questions of equality, diversity and inclusion as they relate to TAS, together. We detailed our aspirations for the project and beyond, and what we believe to be our contributions to understanding TAS in health and social care contexts.
Research Informed Teaching
Case Study of Participatory Research with Children and Young People (Undergraduate module EDU305 School of Education, University of Sheffield)
In March 2023, Prof Dan Goodley and Dr Lauren White contributed the TAS project to the module, ‘Participatory Research with Children and Young People’. The project acted as a case study for students to critically reflect upon how principles of participatory research are embedded, the methodological and ethical issues involved in research that strives to centre and engage children and young people as active contributors in the research project and to consider critical questions around participatory research methods and design. There were approx 20 students on this module.
Case Study of Working across Disciplines (PGT module SMI613, Sheffield Methods Institute (SMI), University of Sheffield)
In March 2023, Dr Lauren White contributed to reflections from the TAS project to the module, ‘Working Across Disciplines’. The project acted as a case study for exploring the affordances, challenges and tensions of interdisciplinary working across the sciences. Further to this, Lauren provided reflections on the points of alignment across disciplines and tips for students who are embarking on interdisciplinary projects in the future. There were approx 20 students on this module.