Jolina H. Ruckert

About

Jolina H. Ruckert is a researcher whose work sits at a compelling intersection of human-robot interaction, moral psychology, and child development. Her scholarship explores how people — particularly children — form social and moral relationships with humanoid and robotic systems, raising fundamental questions about what it means to relate to non-human entities. Her most cited work, "Robovie, you'll have to go into the closet now" (2012, 416 citations), examined how children across different ages attribute social and moral standing to robots, revealing surprisingly deep relational bonds. Complementing this, her research on robotic animals and autism (2008, 176 citations) demonstrated therapeutic potential, showing that robotic companions like AIBO could meaningfully support social development in children with autism. Ruckert has also contributed foundational theoretical work, including the "new ontological category hypothesis" (2011, 125 citations), which argues that personified robots may represent an entirely new category of being in human cognition. Her broader interests extend to technological nature and its psychological dimensions (2009, 279 citations), as well as practical design frameworks for building socially rich robots. Across her body of work, Ruckert consistently pushes researchers and designers to take seriously the ethical and developmental implications of an increasingly robot-integrated world.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   “Robovie, you'll have to go into the closet now”: Children's social and moral relationships with a humanoid robot.

   416 citations · 2012
2. 2
   The Human Relation With Nature and Technological Nature

   279 citations · 2009
3. 3
   Robotic animals might aid in the social development of children with autism

   176 citations · 2008
4. 4
   Design patterns for sociality in human-robot interaction

   172 citations · 2008
5. 5
   Do people hold a humanoid robot morally accountable for the harm it causes?

   162 citations · 2012
6. 6
   The new ontological category hypothesis in human-robot interaction

   125 citations · 2011
7. 7
   Will People Keep the Secret of a Humanoid Robot?

   54 citations · 2015
8. 8
   Human creativity can be facilitated through interacting with a social robot

   42 citations · 2016
9. 9
   Psychological Intimacy with Robots? Using interaction patterns to uncover depth of relation

   17 citations · 2015
10. 10
    Designing for sociality in HRI by means of multiple personas in robots

    13 citations · 2013

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links