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About

Marc Swerts is a researcher whose work sits at the fascinating intersection of human-computer interaction, child development, and social robotics. His primary research focus centers on child-robot interaction (CRI), exploring how children of varying ages and cultural backgrounds engage with, respond to, and form social relationships with humanoid robots — particularly the iCat platform. Swerts' most influential contribution, cited 88 times, examined how cross-cultural differences shape children's experiences when playing games with social robots, comparing these interactions to playing alone or with human peers. This work, alongside earlier collaborative studies from 2010 and 2011 accumulating dozens of additional citations, helped establish robust methodological frameworks for evaluating the social and emotional dimensions of CRI. His findings revealed meaningful differences across age groups and genders, with younger children often rating robot companions more favorably than older peers. Beyond socioemotional dynamics, Swerts has investigated children's deceptive behavior toward robots and explored how artificial or constrained languages might be practically implemented in human-robot communication contexts. His cumulative body of work has meaningfully advanced our understanding of how children perceive robotic agents as social partners, informing the design of more effective and culturally sensitive social robots for educational and recreational settings.