Papers
53
Total Citations
1,387
H-Index
21
About
Manja Lohse is a prominent researcher in human-robot interaction (HRI), with expertise spanning social robotics, robot personality design, proxemics, and user experience evaluation. Her work has fundamentally shaped how researchers and designers think about the social dimensions of robotic systems, accumulating hundreds of citations across a decade of influential publications. Lohse's most celebrated contribution is her involvement in the SPENCER project (262 citations), which deployed a socially aware service robot to guide passengers in busy airports — a landmark demonstration of real-world social robotics at scale. Beyond deployment, she has made significant theoretical contributions, exploring how task context shapes perceived robot personality, how cultural differences influence human-robot spatial dynamics, and whether robots should behave as peers or tutors when engaging children in learning tasks. Her methodological contributions are equally noteworthy. Tools like the BEHAVE-II measurement scale and her frameworks for bridging user expectations with system evaluation have given the field rigorous instruments for assessing human responses to robots. Her early survey work on domestic robot applications and the role of visual appearance in shaping user judgments helped lay foundational groundwork for socially intelligent robot design. Collectively, Lohse's research has made social robots more intuitive, contextually appropriate, and genuinely human-centered.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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- 8Robot gestures make difficult tasks easier48 citations · 2014
- 9Bridging the gap between users' expectations and system evaluations45 citations · 2011
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