Benjamin Johnston

About

Benjamin Johnston is a researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-robot interaction, social robotics, and artificial intelligence. His scholarship has made substantial contributions to understanding how humans and robots can collaborate effectively, with particular emphasis on trust, persuasion, and communication. Johnston's most influential work explores the psychological and social dimensions of robot-human relationships — his 2018 paper on trust in robot recommender systems (60 citations) revealed key factors shaping user acceptance, while his companion study on robot persuasion in food recommendation contexts (31 citations) demonstrated how embodiment shapes consumer behavior. His research extends into gesture-based communication, with multiple papers examining how pointing behaviors enable robots to interpret and direct human attention, advancing more naturalistic interaction paradigms. Johnston has also tackled the computational infrastructure underpinning real-world robotics, including fog robotics architectures for more efficient human-robot interaction. His 2016 co-design study involving robot companions for aging populations reflects a commitment to socially meaningful applications. Rounding out his portfolio are contributions to ontology-based object categorization and ethical reasoning in robotic systems, underscoring his broad vision of robots as trustworthy, intelligent social partners.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Do You Trust Me, Blindly? Factors Influencing Trust Towards a Robot Recommender System

   60 citations · 2018
2. 2
   Bon Appetit! Robot Persuasion for Food Recommendation

   31 citations · 2018
3. 3
   Co-design and Robots: A Case Study of a Robot Dog for Aging People

   28 citations · 2016
4. 4
   Fog Robotics for Efficient, Fluent and Robust Human-Robot Interaction

   24 citations · 2018
5. 5
   Ontology Based Object Categorization for Robots

   24 citations · 2008
6. 6
   Human pointing as a robot directive

   20 citations · 2013
7. 7
   The Essence of Ethical Reasoning in Robot-Emotion Processing

   20 citations · 2017
8. 8
   Using Trust to Determine User Decision Making & Task Outcome During a Human-Agent Collaborative Task

   11 citations · 2021
9. 9
   Social Networking for Robots to Share Knowledge, Skills and Know-How

   7 citations · 2012
10. 10
    Directing human attention with pointing

    7 citations · 2014

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links