Stefan Sosnowski

About

Stefan Sosnowski is a robotics researcher whose work spans human-robot interaction (HRI), autonomous mobile systems, and distributed robotic cooperation. He has made significant contributions to making robots more socially intelligent and emotionally responsive, exploring how facial expressions, empathy, and adaptive emotional behavior can fundamentally reshape how humans perceive and engage with machines. His landmark study on the Autonomous City Explorer (110 citations) demonstrated that robots could navigate complex urban environments through natural interaction with pedestrians, while his work on facial mimicry and the expressive robot head EDDIE revealed that mirroring human emotions substantially improves perceived empathy and performance in HRI (89 citations). Sosnowski's research into emotional adaptation strategies showed that proactively triggering prosocial responses in humans — drawing on social psychology principles — meaningfully increases helpfulness toward robots (64 citations). Beyond social robotics, his contributions extend to underwater vehicles, notably the AMOUR V AUV (71 citations), and distributed control of networked mobile manipulators (94 citations), reflecting remarkable breadth. Collectively accumulating nearly 600 citations across diverse domains, Sosnowski's work offers students and researchers a compelling blueprint for building robots that are not only technically capable but genuinely attuned to human needs and emotions.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   The Autonomous City Explorer: Towards Natural Human-Robot Interaction in Urban Environments

   110 citations · 2009
2. 2
   Fully Distributed Cooperation for Networked Uncertain Mobile Manipulators

   94 citations · 2020
3. 3
   Improving aspects of empathy and subjective performance for HRI through mirroring facial expressions

   89 citations · 2011
4. 4
   AMOUR V: A Hovering Energy Efficient Underwater Robot Capable of Dynamic Payloads

   71 citations · 2010
5. 5
   Increasing Helpfulness towards a Robot by Emotional Adaption to the User

   64 citations · 2013
6. 6
   An emotional adaption approach to increase helpfulness towards a robot

   55 citations · 2012
7. 7
   Impact of Animal-Like Features on Emotion Expression of Robot Head EDDIE

   33 citations · 2010
8. 8
   Towards proactive human-robot interaction in human environments

   28 citations · 2011
9. 9
   Navigation through urban environments by visual perception and interaction

   23 citations · 2009
10. 10
    Towards robotic facial mimicry: System development and evaluation

    17 citations · 2010

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links