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About

Catherine Maguire is a pioneering researcher working at the intersection of movement studies, choreography, and robotics, with a particular focus on how principles drawn from dance and somatic practice can inform the design of expressive, human-facing robotic systems. Her most influential work, "Choreographic and Somatic Approaches for the Development of Expressive Robotic Systems" (2018, 29 citations), established a compelling framework for thinking about how robots are perceived and interpreted by human observers, arguing that context, movement quality, and style are central design considerations as robots migrate out of industrial settings. Building on the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System, Maguire has developed algorithmic methods for generating expressive variable motion in aerial robots and contributed the BESST system, a novel framework for reasoning about temporal qualities in movement. Her 2023 primer, "Making Meaning with Machines," bridges dance and engineering communities by giving designers and scientists rigorous, accessible vocabulary for movement analysis. With over 60 cumulative citations, Maguire's scholarship offers a genuinely interdisciplinary lens, demonstrating that embodied human experience must remain central to the future of interactive robotics.