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About

Alisha Bevins is a leading voice in human-robot interaction, specializing in the nuanced dynamics of how people perceive and respond to small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (sUAVs). Her core research explores the critical intersection of human comfort and robotic communication, fundamentally asking how drones can “speak” to us through their movement. Bevins’s most impactful work, “Investigation of human-robot comfort with a small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle compared to a ground robot” (35 citations), pioneered a direct comparison of human comfort levels between aerial and ground robots, revealing distinct psychological responses to each. She further advanced this field by defining “communicative flight paths,” demonstrating through iterative studies that naive users naturally interpret specific UAV gestures as intentional signals. Her 2021 paper “Aerial Flight Paths for Communication” (32 citations) synthesizes these findings, showing how drones can convey intent and awareness through motion alone. Bevins’s contributions are foundational for designing socially acceptable drones that can operate seamlessly in public spaces, ensuring that as UAVs become ubiquitous, they do so with a built-in understanding of human comfort and communication.