Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Jun Baba is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction, with a particular focus on deploying social and teleoperated robots in real-world service environments such as hotels, shopping malls, and retail stores. His work sits at the intersection of robotics, customer experience design, and behavioral science, addressing one of the field's most pressing challenges: how robots can meaningfully and naturally engage with everyday people in commercial settings. Baba's most influential contribution, "Continuous Hospitality with Social Robots at a Hotel" (2020, 73 citations), established a foundational framework for sustained robot-human service interactions. He has been instrumental in advancing the understanding of teleoperated robots — machines controlled remotely by human operators — demonstrating in field studies that such systems can successfully perform complex tasks like product sales and customer engagement that fully autonomous robots struggle to handle. His research also delves into nuanced factors shaping user perception, including voice pitch, gender, and collaborative human-robot service dynamics. What distinguishes Baba's body of work is its consistent grounding in real-world field experiments rather than controlled lab settings, lending his findings immediate practical relevance. With over 320 cumulative citations across his top papers, his research is shaping how the service industry integrates robotic labor support, making him an essential voice in the future of human-robot collaborative workplaces.