Sally Grindsted Nielsen

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Sally Grindsted Nielsen is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction, performance studies, and healthcare technology. Her work fundamentally challenges conventional approaches to studying social robotics by introducing theatrical methods as a rigorous research tool. Nielsen's most-cited paper, "Using Theatre to Study Interaction with Care Robots" (2016, 52 citations), demonstrates her innovative methodology: employing professional actors and scripted scenarios to simulate realistic care situations, allowing researchers to observe nuanced human responses to robotic assistants without the ethical and practical constraints of live clinical trials. This groundbreaking approach has opened new avenues for understanding how elderly users and caregivers form relationships with assistive technologies. Beyond this seminal work, Nielsen has contributed to designing more empathetic and context-aware care robots, emphasizing the importance of embodied interaction and improvisation in human-robot encounters. Her research has been instrumental in shaping how the robotics community thinks about prototyping and evaluating social robots, particularly in sensitive healthcare settings. By bridging theatre arts and engineering, Nielsen has created a unique methodological framework that continues to influence studies on trust, acceptance, and emotional engagement with robots in care environments.