Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

N. Georgiou is a rising researcher in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), whose work explores how social robots perceive, are perceived by, and bond with humans. Her key research areas include social presence detection, human moral judgment of robots, and the dynamics of long-term human-robot relationships. Georgiou’s most-cited paper (10 citations, 2024) reveals a critical developmental insight: school-age children are more skeptical of inaccurate robots than adults, challenging assumptions about childlike trust in technology. She also developed the REACT datasets (2024, 3 citations), a novel resource for analyzing both human reactions and evaluative feedback to robots over time, advancing the study of implicit communicative signals like gaze and body motion. Her work on audio identification for social robots (2023) tackles the practical challenge of distinguishing natural conversation from media playback, essential for domestic robot deployment. Georgiou’s investigations into perceived morality (2025) and the effects of robot gossip on team cohesion (2024) push boundaries by examining how robots’ social behaviors—including transgressions and bonding strategies—shape human trust and group dynamics. With a focus on both technical perception and social psychology, Georgiou is helping define how robots can become more intuitive, trusted, and integrated social partners.