Ja-Young Sung
Papers
11
Total Citations
1,226
H-Index
9
About
Ja-Young Sung is a pioneering researcher in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), with a particular focus on domestic robots and their integration into everyday home life. Her work has fundamentally shaped how we understand the relationships people form with robotic appliances, most notably through her landmark studies on the iRobot Roomba vacuuming robot. Her influential paper "My Roomba Is Rambo: Intimate Home Appliances" (accumulated nearly 400 citations across versions) revealed that users develop surprising emotional bonds with household robots, while "Robots in the Wild" (147 citations) examined how novelty effects evolve over time in real-world domestic settings. Through her "Domestic Robot Ecology" framework and studies like "Pimp My Roomba" (99 citations), Sung explored how users personalize and adapt robots to fit their lives. Her cross-cultural research comparing Korean and American user expectations (112 citations) added vital global perspective to the field. With her dissertation advancing human-centered design principles for everyday robots, Sung's cumulative body of work — exceeding 1,000 citations — has provided essential empirical foundations for designing robots that are not merely functional, but genuinely compatible with human domestic life.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Evaluating Human-Robot Interaction231 citations · 2010
- 2“My Roomba Is Rambo”: Intimate Home Appliances200 citations · 2007
- 3My roomba is rambo: Intimate home appliances165 citations · 2008
- 4Robots in the wild147 citations · 2009
- 5Domestic Robot Ecology145 citations · 2010
- 6
- 7"Pimp My Roomba"99 citations · 2009
- 8Housewives or technophiles?92 citations · 2008
- 9Sketching the future: Assessing user needs for domestic robots30 citations · 2009
- 10Towards the human-centered design of everyday robots3 citations · 2011