Mia Mathiesen

University of Southern Denmark, Maersk (Denmark)

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Mia Mathiesen’s research lies at the intersection of human-robot interaction, rehabilitation engineering, and trust psychology. Her work focuses on how patients perceive and trust robotic systems in medical contexts, particularly during kinesthetic guidance and rehabilitation exercises. In her most-cited paper, “Trust in Medical Human-Robot Interactions based on Kinesthetic Guidance” (2018, 13 citations), Mathiesen explores how physical interaction with a therapeutic robot—the Universal RoboTrainer—affects user trust, a critical factor in clinical adoption. Her follow-up study, “Changes in Heart Rate and Feeling of Safety When Led by a Rehabilitation Robot” (2019, 5 citations), provides physiological and subjective evidence that users’ heart rates and perceptions of safety shift during robot-led tasks, offering early empirical grounding for designing more trustworthy rehabilitation robots. Though her citation counts are modest, Mathiesen’s work is notable for its interdisciplinary approach, combining psychophysiological measures with robotics to address a pressing human-centered challenge: ensuring vulnerable patients feel safe and trusting when guided by machines. Her contributions are foundational for researchers developing socially assistive robots in healthcare.