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About

Peter A. M. Ruijten is a prominent researcher in human-robot interaction (HRI), with expertise spanning anthropomorphism, social robotics, robot navigation, and moral accountability. His work has garnered over 400 citations, reflecting substantial influence in the field. Ruijten has made significant methodological contributions to measuring anthropomorphism — the attribution of human-like qualities to robots. His development and validation of a Rasch-type anthropomorphism scale (2014; 2019, 109 citations) provided the HRI community with more rigorous, psychometrically sound tools, addressing inconsistencies that had long plagued the field. Complementing this, his multisite investigation of the Uncanny Valley effect (2019, 90 citations) helped clarify the role of perceptual category confusion in explaining human discomfort toward near-human robots. A recurring theme in Ruijten's research is robot proxemics — how robots should navigate around people respectfully and safely. His studies on passing distances, personal space, and conversational group dynamics (2017–2022) offer practical guidelines for designing socially aware autonomous robots. More recently, he has explored moral dimensions of HRI, investigating whether people blame or punish robots for ethical transgressions (2021). Together, his body of work offers both theoretical depth and real-world applicability for designing robots that integrate naturally into human social environments.