From Co-design to Industry: investigating both ends of the scale of developing Social Robots

(NOTE: Submitted as STSM grant beneficiary under COST 16226)This paper merges two separate work packages – Co-design as a genuine bottom-up approach and industry-based perspectives on the development and future of social robotics. The first work package is mainly informed from undertaking a literature review of the premiere outlet for Co-design – the Participatory Design Conference series (bi-annual since 1990), where the focus was on Elderly and Social Robots. That particular work package is published in the [COST] state-of-the-art report as well as underpinned by own publications and research from a Danish neuro-center context of co-designing social robots (Rodil, Rehm and Krummheuer, 2018). The other, industrial, view has been informed by a Short Term Scientific Mission granted under the Sheld-on COST Action (16226) allowing a trip to visit Dr. Isaacson at Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Sciences Department of Gerontology, Haifa University in Israel and a series of companies pertaining to development of social robots (and more broadly) for the aging population. The STSM objectives (STSM, 2018).