Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Bohkyung Chun is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of anthropology and human-robot interaction (HRI). Her work fundamentally reimagines how we study and design social robots, moving beyond purely technical metrics to embrace deep ethnographic and reflexive methodologies. Chun’s major contributions include demonstrating that robots can effectively ask humans for help when facing physical limitations, a concept explored in her highly cited paper “Would You Please Buy Me a Coffee?” (19 citations). She also introduced the critical practice of ethnographic reflexivity to HRI, arguing that researchers’ own presence and biases shape the data they collect—a methodological shift detailed in her 2019 autoethnography (16 citations). Her landmark study, “The Robot Makers” (38 citations), offers a rare, 10-month participatory ethnography inside a robotics company, revealing how engineers and users collectively construct robot anthropomorphism. More recently, Chun has pushed into cutting-edge AI integration, developing “Dobby,” a conversational service robot powered by GPT-4 that can understand natural language, execute multi-step tasks, and remember user preferences. Her work has earned over 90 total citations and is reshaping how service robots are deployed in real-world settings, from cafes to workplaces, emphasizing camaraderie, customization, and human-in-the-loop design.