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About

Susan R. Fussell is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction (HRI), computer-mediated communication, and social robotics. Her work has fundamentally shaped our understanding of how people perceive, relate to, and communicate with robots and artificial agents. Fussell is perhaps best known for her rigorous investigations into anthropomorphism—the human tendency to attribute human-like qualities to robots. Her landmark studies comparing embodied humanoid robots with computer agents (garnering over 400 and 341 citations respectively) demonstrated that physical presence and embodiment meaningfully influence how people respond to robotic systems, providing crucial empirical grounding for the field of social robotics. Beyond perception, Fussell has made significant contributions to robot communication design, exploring how robots should give advice, adapt their dialogue to individual users, and employ politeness strategies to achieve positive social outcomes. Her research on video-mediated remote collaboration and telepresence robots further reflects her enduring interest in how technology mediates human connection across distance. With thousands of citations accumulated across her career, Fussell's work bridges cognitive science, linguistics, and robotics, offering researchers and designers actionable frameworks for building robots that interact naturally and effectively with people in real-world social contexts.