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About

Lina Van Aerschot is a Finnish researcher whose work sits at the intersection of social robotics, care ethics, and gerontechnology, with a particular focus on how robotic technologies can — and should — be integrated into elderly care settings. Her most-cited contribution, "Towards Ethical Guidelines of Using Telepresence Robots in Residential Care" (2019, 104 citations), established foundational frameworks for responsibly deploying robots among older adults, addressing complex questions of privacy, dignity, and social connection. Her 2018 study on Finnish healthcare professionals' attitudes toward robots (81 citations) provided one of the field's most rigorous population-level examinations of care worker readiness and acceptance of robotic assistance. Van Aerschot brings both critical and empirical perspectives to her scholarship. Her 2020 review (63 citations) interrogates the 25-year gap between the ambitions of care robotics pioneers and the limited reality of currently available products, offering an important corrective to techno-optimism in the field. Her phenomenological work further explores how companion robots simulate aliveness and emotional connection, bridging philosophy and human-robot interaction research. Collectively, her publications — spanning ethics, professional attitudes, and policy roadmaps — have meaningfully shaped the conversation around responsible robotization of care, making her a key voice in European social robotics discourse.