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About

Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn is a prominent researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-robot interaction, social robotics, and the psychological dimensions of emerging technologies. His research explores how humans perceive, respond to, and form relationships with robots, spanning topics from proxemics and navigation comfort to moral accountability and emotional bonding. IJsselsteijn has made significant contributions to our understanding of personal space in human-robot encounters, demonstrating through carefully designed experiments how robot speed, gaze behavior, and passing distance shape human comfort — work that has garnered substantial citations and directly informs the design of socially aware autonomous robots. His investigations into moral psychology reveal nuanced findings, such as people's tendency to punish rather than blame robots for harm, raising important ethical questions for the field. Earlier foundational work on telepresence and self-attribution reflects his longstanding interest in how humans psychologically identify with robotic systems. More recently, IJsselsteijn has turned attention to socially assistive robots for older adults, advocating for greater personalization and interactivity to improve real-world adoption. Collectively, his scholarship shapes how researchers and designers think about building robots that are safe, trustworthy, and genuinely integrated into human social life.