Projects

MEET aims to advance current understanding of how children experience engaging in spontaneous social interactions with robots. To do so, we investigate the progressive building up and maintenance of interpersonal synchrony in spontaneous joint activities between child and robot. MEET is a collaborative interdisciplinary project with Iolanda Leite (KTH) and Daniel Benoit (MoRe Lab, Lund University) generously supported by LMK Stiftelsen.

Contact: valentina.fantasialucs.luse

2026-2028

Movements Matters (MoMa) is a grounding project aimed at investigating the key role played by bodily movements for building positive interactions between humans and artificial social agents. In the project, we looked at the role of interpersonal synchronisation in building positive social interactions between humans and robots. We analyse a joint dynamic interaction between EPI, our humanoid robot, and human co-interactant, to explore whether higher kinematic synchrony improve the human perception of positive engagement with the robot. MoMa is a collaborative project with the Humanities Lab (LU), generously supported by the Crafoord Stiftelsen.

Contact: valentina.fantasialucs.luse

2023-2025

This project endorses an embodied, situated perspective to investigate the interactional dynamics between humans and social autonomous systems. Embodiment has become an important concept in many areas of cognitive science; however, while many would agree that humans are embodied cognisers, there is much less agreement on what kind of humanly crafted artifacts could be considered embodied. The project seeks to explore this issue by integrating theories and methods from cognitive science, philosophy, and robotics (but also drawing on sociology, ethnomethodology, and linguistics). The project was generously funded by The Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanity and Society (WASP-HS).

Contact: valentina.fantasialucs.luse

2021-2027

PhD Project Topic Title: Investigating children’s ontological understanding of robots from a feminist perspective

The project investigates how individuals, particularly children, conceptualize, perceive and interact with technologies such as robots. I examine how social dynamics include power relations, gender and expectations with and around these shape understandings of and encounters with robots. Drawing on Feminist technoscience, Science Technology Studies (STS), and Developmental psychology, my research situates Human- Technology (child-robot) interactions within their broader social, cultural and institutional contexts such as schools.

Methodologically, my project employs qualitative and child-centered research methods to foreground children’s perspectives and lived experiences. These include drawing-based methods, role-play, and story construction that enable children to express meanings, imaginaries, and expectations of surrounding technologies in accessible and creative ways.

Through these methodological and theoretical integrations, my project aims to support the development of more inclusive, responsible and ethically informed models of human-robot interaction, grounded in the voices and experiences of those who engage with, imagining these technologies in different ways/contexts.

Contact:  gaye.askinlucs.luse

My project investigates social and ethical dimensions of failures in human–robot interaction (HRI), focusing on how people respond to and compensate for robot breakdowns. My first study examined multimodal interaction in a turn-taking game, showing that participants adapt their (gaze) behaviour and often engage in repair actions, such as acting on behalf of the robot or establishing ad-hoc rules for handling failures and delays (Stedtler et al. 2024; Stedtler et al. 2025; Stedtler, Harrison & Fantasia, 2026). This has informed a broader interest in repair and care within interaction and Science and Technology Studies (STS), as well as questions of how responsibility is distributed when robots fail and how human agency can be supported in these situations (Brinck & Stedtler, 2024; Stedtler 2024; Stedtler & Leventi, 2025). In addition, I investigate how humans perform often invisible labour to support or fix robot failures in real-world contexts, drawing on feminist scholarship on hidden work (Stedtler, 2025). This work challenges the assumption of robot autonomy by showing how human scaffolding and repair are central to successful operation. My latest research shifts toward third-person expectations, examining how bystanders may be implicitly assigned responsibility to prevent or repair robot errors, particularly in sensitive contexts like healthcare.

References:

Stedtler, S., Harrison, K., & Fantasia, V. (2026). Helping or watching it happen: how participants respond to robot failures in a turn-taking game. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 12, 1664334.

Stedtler, S., Fantasia, V., Tjøstheim, T. A., Brinck, I., Johansson, B., & Balkenius, C. (2025). Gaze and movement adaptation in response to delayed robotic movement during turn-taking. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 34098.

Stedtler, S. (2025, March). Staging, Accommodating or Caring: Reviewing the Human Labor Involved in Shaping Robots into Agents. In 2025 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) (pp. 1650-1654). IEEE.

Stedtler, S., & Leventi, M. (2025). Who is responsible? Social identity, robot errors and blame attribution. In Social Robots with AI: Prospects, Risks, and Responsible Methods: Proceedings of Robophilosophy 2024, 19–23 August 2024, Aarhus University, Denmark, and online (pp. 284-297). 1 Oliver's Yard, 55 City Road, London, EC1Y 1SP: SAGE Publications Pvt. Ltd.

Stedtler, S., Fantasia, V., Tjøstheim, T. A., Johansson, B., Brinck, I., & Balkenius, C. (2024, March). Is there really an effect of time delays on perceived fluency and social attributes between humans and social robots? a pilot study. In Companion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 1013-1017).

Stedtler, S. (2024). Social Injustice, Group Membership and Epistemic Trust in Robots. In Robo-Identity Workshop 3, HRI'24: Robo-Identity: Designing for Identity in the Shared World (pp. 1-4).

Brinck, I., & Stedtler, S. (2024). Frictional design in human-robot interaction: Delayed movement in a turn-taking game. In CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 3825, pp. 37-41). CEUR-WS.

Contact: samantha.stedtlerlucs.luse