Beatrice Alenljung

About

Beatrice Alenljung is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction (HRI), with a particular focus on affective touch, user experience (UX), and socially interactive robotics. Her work sits at a compelling intersection of emotion, embodiment, and human-centered design, asking how people can meaningfully communicate with and relate to social robots in everyday life. Alenljung's most influential contribution — her 2017 study on affective touch with the Nao robot (134 citations) — broke new ground as the first HRI study to explore tactile conveyance of both positive and negative emotions to a humanoid robot, revealing how touch can serve as a genuine channel for emotional expression in human-robot relationships. This work spawned a productive research thread examining wearable affective interfaces, UX perspectives on emotion conveyance, and design implications for touch-based interaction. Equally significant is her sustained effort to build rigorous evaluation frameworks for social robotics, exemplified by the ANEMONE framework (41 citations), which provides systematic tools for assessing action and intention recognition in HRI. Her cumulative body of work — totaling over 400 citations — has helped establish UX as a critical lens for ensuring that social robots deliver meaningful, long-term value to the people who use them.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Affective Touch in Human–Robot Interaction: Conveying Emotion to the Nao Robot

   134 citations · 2017
2. 2
   User Experience in Social Human-Robot Interaction

   62 citations · 2017
3. 3
   Evaluating the User Experience of Human–Robot Interaction

   48 citations · 2020
4. 4
   User Experience in Social Human-Robot Interaction

   43 citations · 2019
5. 5
   The ANEMONE: Theoretical Foundations for UX Evaluation of Action and Intention Recognition in Human-Robot Interaction

   41 citations · 2020
6. 6
   Designing for a Wearable Affective Interface for the NAO Robot: A Study of Emotion Conveyance by Touch

   24 citations · 2018
7. 7
   Conveying Emotions by Touch to the Nao Robot: A User Experience Perspective

   21 citations · 2018
8. 8
   User experience of conveying emotions by touch

   14 citations · 2017
9. 9
   User Experience of Socially Interactive Robots

   12 citations · 2015
10. 10
    Socially Embodied Human-Robot Interaction

    10 citations · 2015

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links