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About

Elliott Hauser is a human-robot interaction (HRI) researcher whose work sits at the intersection of robotics, healthcare technology, and social science. He is best known for his investigations into care robots in assisted living facilities, examining how these technologies might address critical nursing shortages while reshaping the lived experiences of both older adults and caregiving staff. His scoping review on robots in assisted living facilities (2023) has garnered 42 citations, establishing him as a key voice in this emerging field, while his complementary systematic literature reviews on nursing staff perspectives and attitudes have further shaped scholarly understanding of frontline workers' relationships with robotic care technologies. Beyond healthcare settings, Hauser has made notable contributions to understanding everyday human encounters with autonomous robots. His studies of incidental interactions with quadruped robots explore how design cues — such as a leash — influence public perception and comfort, applying grounded theory methods to capture nuanced human responses. He has also developed the Vid2Real HRI framework, a methodological innovation designed to bridge controlled study designs and real-world deployment conditions. His ethnographic work examining how robotic autonomy is socially and materially constructed in engineering laboratories reflects a sophisticated, critically informed approach to studying emerging technologies in their full human context.