ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we explore how pet robots come into being in a Danish nursing home for people with dementia. Based on five months of ethnographic fieldwork, we argue that the researcher and the robot become an assembled temporary figure in the nursing home: the woman with the dog. We show how pet robots are characterised by their fluidity and can go from being mechanical robots to living animals in a matter of seconds during interactions with nursing home residents. The robots are fragile technologies that disappear and cease to be used if people in the nursing home stop caring for them. Through human–robot interactions, the pet robots come into being together with other actors in the nursing home – a process that requires care practices and flexibility from those working with the robots. The robots need care to become embedded in the nursing home.
