Stefan Kopp
Papers
45
Total Citations
2,046
H-Index
19
About
Stefan Kopp is a prominent researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-robot interaction, embodied communication, and intelligent tutoring systems. Based at Bielefeld University, Kopp has made foundational contributions to understanding how nonverbal behavior — particularly gesture — shapes social perception and interaction with artificial agents, whether virtual or robotic. His early work established that robot gesture profoundly influences how humans perceive artificial agents, with his 2013 paper on anthropomorphism and likability accumulating over 400 citations and becoming a touchstone reference in the field. Alongside this, his investigations into virtual agents demonstrated how appearance and nonverbal cues shape impressions of warmth and competence over time, bridging social psychology and human-computer interaction. Kopp's more recent research has pioneered the use of social robots as second language tutors for children, combining adaptive Bayesian knowledge tracing with gesture-enhanced pedagogy to create responsive, personalized learning experiences. His large-scale classroom studies, drawing over 130 citations, have helped transform this from theoretical promise into evidence-based practice. Through reinforcement learning approaches to social behavior generation, Kopp continues pushing toward robots that genuinely adapt to human needs — making him a defining voice in socially intelligent robotics.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2Generation and Evaluation of Communicative Robot Gesture182 citations · 2012
- 3Guidelines for Designing Social Robots as Second Language Tutors160 citations · 2018
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- 5Second Language Tutoring Using Social Robots: A Large-Scale Study137 citations · 2019
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