Papers
7
Total Citations
111
H-Index
4
About
Denis Vidal is a French anthropologist whose work sits at a fascinating intersection of social anthropology, philosophy, and robotics, with a particular focus on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and the anthropological dimensions of artificial beings. His most influential contribution, "Anthropomorphism or sub-anthropomorphism? An anthropological approach to gods and robots" (2007, 68 citations), challenged prevailing assumptions in robotics by bringing ethnographic and anthropological perspectives to bear on how humans relate to robots, drawing provocative comparisons with religious relationships to divine figures. This work established him as a distinctive voice bridging humanistic inquiry and technological research. Vidal has consistently interrogated the concept of anthropomorphism, developing it beyond a simplistic "trap" into what he terms an "anthropomorphic pact" — a nuanced framework for understanding human-robot sociality. His fieldwork among Parisian roboticists grounds his theoretical contributions in rich empirical observation. Notably, his collaborative research on museum-visiting robots explored how machines might develop aesthetic preferences through social interaction, combining developmental robotics with cultural anthropology in a genuinely innovative way. With over 100 cumulative citations, Vidal's scholarship offers researchers and students a rare, humanistically rigorous lens through which to examine one of the defining technological questions of our era.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2Vers un nouveau pacte anthropomorphique !21 citations · 2012
- 3Un robot comme personne8 citations · 2014
- 4
- 5
- 6Is it useful for a robot to visit a museum?2 citations · 2018
- 7Artificial aesthetic: An interesting framework for epigenetic robotics2 citations · 2012