Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Gerhard Sagerer is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction, cognitive robotics, and social robotics, whose work has fundamentally shaped how scientists understand the relationship between humans and intelligent machines. Based at Bielefeld University, Sagerer has made landmark contributions to the development of socially aware robotic systems capable of natural, multimodal interaction with everyday users. His most celebrated work, "Can Machines Think?" (2008, 486 citations), used fMRI neuroimaging to investigate how humans implicitly attribute intentions and mental states to machines — a groundbreaking bridge between robotics and cognitive neuroscience. His research on anthropomorphism further revealed how a robot's appearance and behavior shape human perception and expectation, accumulating hundreds of citations across multiple studies. Sagerer also led the development of BIRON, a real-world robot companion designed for home environments, and Flobi, an expressive anthropomorphic robot head, demonstrating his commitment to translating theory into tangible systems. His roadmap for developmental robotics influenced how the field conceptualizes embodied learning in humanoid agents. Collectively, his papers have garnered well over 1,600 citations, establishing him as a defining voice in designing robots that humans can genuinely interact with, trust, and understand.