Sylvaine Tuncer

King's College London, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, The King's College

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Sylvaine Tuncer is a leading researcher in human-robot interaction (HRI), with a focus on the fine-grained, real-time dynamics of how people make sense of and coordinate with social robots. Her work is grounded in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, bringing a rigorous, empirical lens to the design and evaluation of robotic systems. A major contribution is her study of *recipient design*—how people adapt their talk and actions based on their assessment of a robot’s competence. Her most-cited paper (2023, 28 citations) reveals that people treat a robot as a competent social actor from the very first encounter, adjusting their conduct in ways that shape the interaction's trajectory. Tuncer has also pioneered the use of robots to foster social inclusion, demonstrating in a 2022 study (24 citations) how a robot can transform gaze aversion into mutual smiling gaze among children, including newly arrived migrants. Her detailed analyses of turn-taking violations in HRI (2023, 6 citations) further illuminate the normative expectations people bring to interactions with machines. By documenting the subtle, emergent order of human-robot encounters, Tuncer’s research provides critical insights for designing robots that are not just functional, but genuinely socially intelligent.