ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses sociological perspectives on the formation of social and emotional relationships with artefacts and related basic questions of sociality arising against the background of technological developments in the field of “social robotics”, and prompted by the notion of “artificial companionship”, in particular. The development of social robots has been described as a new sub-field in the emerging field of “service robotics” which can be put in contrast with earlier applications of robotics in industrial and field settings. Social robots are meant to fulfill a range of purposes, and they come in various shapes, sizes, and degrees of technological sophistication. This chapter lays out a conceptualization of artificial companions as “vehicles to cultural worlds of experience”. The argument starts with the phenomenon of “universal projection”, humans’ ubiquitous capability to animate their material surroundings, which in the case of robotics gains further traction against the background of largely mediatized life-worlds in contemporary societies.
