Cristian Bogdan

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Cristian Bogdan is a researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-robot interaction, autonomous public transport, and social robotics. His investigations explore how social robots can fulfill meaningful roles in emerging transportation contexts, particularly as autonomous vehicles increasingly remove the traditional human intermediary — the driver or host — from public transit settings. Bogdan's most notable contributions center on deploying social robots as hosts aboard autonomous shuttle buses, examining their capacity to foster passenger feelings of safety and security in intimate, driverless environments. His 2024 study, conducted through a real-world experiment on autonomous buses in Stockholm, Sweden, pioneered empirical evaluation of this concept, garnering 5 citations and establishing a foundation for subsequent field trials. His 2025 follow-up work extended these findings into structured field conditions, further interrogating the social dynamics that emerge when passengers share small autonomous vehicles without human authority figures present. Through this body of work, Bogdan addresses a genuinely novel societal challenge: as autonomous public transport becomes reality, who — or what — ensures passenger comfort and manages interpersonal tensions onboard? His research offers both practical design insights and broader implications for the future of human-robot collaboration in everyday urban mobility.