Papers
6
Total Citations
59
H-Index
3
About
Nicola Webb is a researcher specializing in social robotics, human-robot interaction, and affective computing, with a particular focus on enabling robots to perceive and respond to human social cues. Her foundational work in facial expression recognition established deep learning frameworks capable of operating in real-time and unconstrained environments — a technically demanding challenge given the sensitivity of neural networks to shifts in data distribution. Her 2018 and 2020 papers on this topic have collectively garnered over 40 citations, underscoring their significance to the field. Webb's research has since expanded to encompass broader dimensions of social awareness, developing novel metrics for measuring visual social engagement through proxemics and gaze analysis — work she has refined and validated in real-world settings across multiple publications. More recently, her investigations into human-robot teaming have tackled the critical question of trust, examining how swift trust forms in mobile ad hoc teams and how co-movement dynamics shape ongoing trust development. Together, these contributions trace a coherent and ambitious research trajectory: building socially intelligent robots that can read human intentions, integrate seamlessly into teams, and earn the trust necessary to operate effectively alongside people in high-stakes environments.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Deep Learning for Real Time Facial Expression Recognition in Social Robots23 citations · 2018
- 2
- 3Measuring Visual Social Engagement from Proxemics and Gaze8 citations · 2022
- 4
- 5Swift Trust in Mobile Ad Hoc Human-Robot Teams3 citations · 2024
- 6Co-Movement and Trust Development in Human-Robot Teams3 citations · 2025