James E. Young

About

James E. Young is a prominent human-robot interaction (HRI) researcher whose work sits at the intersection of social psychology, affective computing, and robot design. His influential 2008 paper applying social psychology insights to domestic robots (261 citations) and his 2010 framework for evaluating HRI (231 citations) have become foundational references for researchers designing socially acceptable robots. Young has made significant contributions to understanding how people emotionally and psychologically respond to robots — exploring whether users feel empathy for simulated robots, how they build rapport with collaborative machines, and fascinatingly, whether they will obey robotic authority figures. His investigations into affective locomotion, drawing on the Laban Effort System to communicate emotion through robot movement, opened creative new pathways for expressive robot design. His early work on "robot expressionism through cartooning" demonstrated an innovative approach to intuitive human-robot communication using simplified visual cues. With practical contributions ranging from dog-leash robot interfaces to industrial collaborative robot behavior, Young's research bridges theoretical social science and real-world robotics design. His body of work, accumulating nearly 1,000 citations, makes him an essential voice in making robots genuinely comprehensible, trustworthy, and socially integrated into human environments.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Toward Acceptable Domestic Robots: Applying Insights from Social Psychology

   261 citations · 2008
2. 2
   Evaluating Human-Robot Interaction

   231 citations · 2010
3. 3
   Poor Thing! Would You Feel Sorry for a Simulated Robot?

   115 citations · 2015
4. 4
   Communicating affect via flight path Exploring use of the Laban Effort System for designing affective locomotion paths

   78 citations · 2013
5. 5
   Communicating affect via flight path: exploring use of the laban effort system for designing affective locomotion paths

   62 citations · 2013
6. 6
   Investigating People’s Rapport Building and Hindering Behaviors When Working with a Collaborative Robot

   60 citations · 2017
7. 7
   Robot expressionism through cartooning

   48 citations · 2007
8. 8
   Please continue, we need more data: an exploration of obedience to robots

   45 citations · 2016
9. 9
   Please Continue, We Need More Data: An Exploration of Obedience to Robots

   45 citations · 2015
10. 10
    How to walk a robot: A dog-leash human-robot interface

    43 citations · 2011

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links