Papers
62
Total Citations
1,214
H-Index
19
About
Mary Ellen Foster is a prominent researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction, natural language generation, and social robotics. Her work fundamentally addresses how robots can engage with humans in dynamic, real-world environments through intelligent, socially aware behavior. Foster is perhaps best known for her pioneering robot bartender research, which demonstrated that humanoid robots could manage complex multi-party social interactions, integrating computer vision, linguistic processing, and high-level reasoning into cohesive systems. Her comparative study of task-based versus socially intelligent robot behavior (64 citations) provided compelling evidence that socially appropriate conduct meaningfully improves human-robot service interactions. This line of inquiry extended naturally into the MuMMER Project (67 citations), which pushed human-robot interaction into real-world public spaces. Her earlier work on multimodal referring expressions and haptic-ostensive communication (91 citations) helped establish richer frameworks for how robots communicate beyond simple speech. Her most-cited contribution (92 citations) introduced the multi-customer bartender robot that became a landmark demonstration in the field. With a cumulative citation count exceeding 600 across her top papers, and her 2019 survey on natural language generation for social robotics offering a comprehensive forward-looking perspective, Foster remains an influential voice shaping the future of socially intelligent robotic agents.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Two people walk into a bar92 citations · 2012
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- 4Comparing task-based and socially intelligent behaviour in a robot bartender64 citations · 2013
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- 6Planning for Social Interaction in a Robot Bartender Domain57 citations · 2013
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- 8Integrating Language, Vision and Action for Human Robot Dialog Systems45 citations · 2007
- 9How can i help you'43 citations · 2013
- 10