Papers
9
Total Citations
119
H-Index
6
About
Ritta Baddoura is a researcher specializing in human-robot interaction (HRI), with a particular focus on the social, affective, and therapeutic dimensions of how humans engage with humanoid robots. Her work sits at a compelling intersection of cognitive science, social psychology, and robotics, exploring what makes interactions with robots feel natural, meaningful, and emotionally resonant. Among her most significant contributions is her pioneering investigation of "the familiar" as a conceptual framework in HRI — examining how feelings of familiarity or fear shape human behavior and perception during robot encounters. Her most cited work (45 citations) establishes key distinctions between socially useful and genuinely sociable robots, revealing how robot behavior influences a human partner's emotional experience. She also developed a multidimensional model for measuring empathy toward robots, offering a rigorous 16-item tool that has informed subsequent research in the field. Baddoura has further explored the therapeutic potential of humanoid robots as social mediators, contributing French-language scholarship that bridges academic robotics research and clinical applications. Her motion-analysis studies add a rich behavioral dimension to understanding HRI dynamics. Collectively, her body of work advances a more human-centered understanding of robot design and deployment, making her a distinctive voice in affective and social robotics research.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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- 2Testing Empathy with Robots: A Model in Four Dimensions and Sixteen Items22 citations · 2014
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- 7Perspectives thérapeutiques : le robot humanoïde5 citations · 2015
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