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About

Arvid Kappas is a prominent researcher whose work sits at the intersection of social robotics, human-robot interaction, and affective computing. His scholarship explores how humans form meaningful relationships with robots, how robots can be designed to exhibit empathic qualities, and the broader social implications of integrating robots into everyday life. Kappas has made influential contributions to the development of empathic robotic tutors, investigating how emotionally responsive robots can enhance personalized learning experiences for children — a thread running across multiple works from 2013 through 2018. His meta-analysis on children's trust in social robots (2021, 90 citations) provided the field with a much-needed systematic framework for understanding the factors shaping child-robot trust. Equally notable is his longitudinal research examining how human-robot relationships evolve over time, including disclosure patterns among informal caregivers and sustained emotional engagement. Kappas has also tackled thorny societal questions, exploring how robots challenge intergroup relations and raise moral concerns around mind perception. His interdisciplinary approach — bridging psychology, engineering, and ethics — has made him a distinctive voice in social robotics. With several papers exceeding 70 citations and a body of work spanning nearly a decade, Kappas continues to shape how researchers and practitioners think about robots as genuine social actors.