Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Yanghee Kim is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of child development, educational technology, and human-robot interaction, whose work has significantly advanced our understanding of how young children learn and socialize through embodied and robotic experiences. Her most influential contributions center on child-robot interaction (CRI), where she investigates how social humanoid robots can serve as meaningful mediators of play, learning, and friendship formation in early childhood settings. Her 2021 study on young children's embodied interactions with social robots, cited 48 times, demonstrated how a robot's physical presence and sensory capabilities uniquely scaffold children's cognitive and social engagement, drawing on embodied cognition theory. Building on this foundation, Kim's research has tackled equity and inclusion, exploring how robot-mediated interactions can support culturally and linguistically diverse kindergarteners — a contribution cited 21 times that holds particular relevance for increasingly diverse classrooms. Her more recent work examines friendship development through triadic child-robot play and extends into computational thinking assessment using mixed-reality environments. Collectively, Kim's research offers educators and designers evidence-based frameworks for harnessing emerging technologies to foster meaningful, inclusive early childhood learning experiences.