Nora Weinberger

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Technology Assessment

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Nora Weinberger’s research sits at the critical intersection of robotics, ethics, and human development, exploring how autonomous systems should interact with—and be perceived by—people in sensitive settings like healthcare and early childhood. Her most-cited work, “Assistant without Master? Some Conceptual Implications of Assistive Robotics in Health Care” (2018, 16 citations), challenges the vague umbrella term “assistive technologies,” arguing that current robotics in inpatient care often lacks a clear framework for human-robot hierarchy and responsibility. This conceptual clarity is vital as robots take on more caregiving roles. In a strikingly different vein, her 2024 study “Drawings for Insight on Preschoolers' Perception of Robots” (6 citations) uses children’s drawings as a powerful, non-verbal tool to uncover how young minds imagine robots, offering actionable design insights for creating child-friendly, acceptable robotic companions. Most recently, her 2025 paper “Artificial Moral Agents: Should Machines Take Ethical Responsibility?” (1 citation) tackles the urgent question of moral agency in autonomous systems, from healthcare robots to self-driving cars. Weinberger’s work is notable for bridging abstract ethical theory with concrete, age-specific user studies, making her a distinctive voice in responsible AI design.