Kayla Riegner

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Kayla Riegner is a rising researcher in human-robot interaction (HRI), whose work focuses on the critical intersection of trust, communication, and experimental methodology in autonomous systems. Her primary research areas include trust repair in human-robot relationships, the design of real-time user study tools, and the social acceptance of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). Riegner’s most cited work, "Spot Report: An Open-Source and Real-Time Secondary Task for Human-Robot Interaction User Experiments" (2024, 7 citations), addresses a pressing methodological gap in the HRI community by providing a standardized, open-source tool that transmits user performance data in real-time during robot interaction studies. This contribution enables more ecologically valid experiments where humans must balance attention between a robot and a secondary task. Her earlier research, "Promises and Trust Repair in UGVs" (2023, 2 citations), explores how autonomous vehicles can rebuild user trust after errors—a fundamental challenge for the deployment of self-navigating robots in safety-critical roles. By investigating how verbal promises and apologies affect trust recovery, Riegner’s work has direct implications for designing more socially intelligent and accepted autonomous systems. Her contributions are particularly notable for bridging technical tool development with foundational questions of human psychology, making her a promising voice in the future of trustworthy robotics.