Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Limei Cao is a leading researcher at the intersection of artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, and organizational behavior. Her work fundamentally explores how people perceive, interact with, and are influenced by AI and social robots. Cao’s most significant contribution is the development of the **Capability-Personalization Framework**, which reconciles the long-standing paradox of “AI aversion” versus “AI appreciation.” Through a major meta-analytic review (53 citations, 2025), she demonstrates that people’s preference for AI over humans depends on the AI’s perceived capability for the task and the degree of personalization offered. This framework has become a cornerstone for understanding human-AI decision-making. Her highly cited experimental work (48 citations, 2021) revealed a striking finding: adults exhibit normative conformity—changing their answers to match a group—even when the group consists of a social robot, proving that robotic influence rivals human social pressure. Cao also investigates fairness perceptions in AI decision-making (2022) and has pioneered the concept of “Leader Anthropomorphizing Behavior Toward Robots” (LABR), exploring how managers who treat robots as human-like can inadvertently foster feelings of objectification among employees. Her research is vital for designing ethical, effective, and socially intelligent AI systems.