Andrew Palmer

Cranfield University, University of Nevada, Reno, University of Wales

Papers

Total Citations

109

H-Index

About

Andrew Palmer is a pioneering figure in robotics, whose career spans foundational work in industrial automation to cutting-edge human-robot interaction. His early landmark contribution, "The Development of a European Benchmark for the Comparison of Assembly Robot Programming Systems" (1985, 73 citations), established a critical framework for evaluating robot programming efficiency, influencing an entire generation of manufacturing systems. More recently, Palmer has focused on the cognitive and social dimensions of robotics. His highly cited study, "Perception of Social Intelligence in Robots Performing False-Belief Tasks" (2019, 19 citations), experimentally demonstrated how a robot’s ability to pass a Theory of Mind test—using the classic Sally-Anne paradigm—significantly enhances human perception of its social intelligence and animacy. This work bridges developmental psychology and HRI. Palmer also advanced robot learning with "Learning of Complex-Structured Tasks from Verbal Instruction" (2019, 9 citations), developing a novel framework for mapping complex, hierarchical tasks directly from natural language. Complementing these cognitive advances, his work on "Touch-triggered withdrawal reflexes for safer robots" (2011, 8 citations) introduced bio-inspired safety mechanisms for physical HRI. Palmer’s career uniquely spans from benchmarking industrial robots to exploring their social cognition, making him a key figure in the evolution of intelligent, interactive machines.