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About

Peter Wallis is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction, with a focus on social engagement and the challenges of deploying autonomous agents in real-world domestic settings. His work critically examines the gap between technology demonstration and actual user adoption, most notably in his highly cited paper "A Robot in the Kitchen" (12 citations), which reveals that people often ignore even carefully designed robotic companions. Wallis’s foundational contribution, "Intention without representation" (9 citations), challenges traditional AI paradigms by demonstrating how planning and means-ends analysis can function without symbolic representation, effectively sidestepping the symbol grounding problem. As the lead investigator of the SERA (Social Engagement with Robots and Agents) project, he has advanced understanding of long-term human-robot relationships, deploying interactive domestic robots in users’ homes for extended periods to generate rich audiovisual data. His work on "rabbitic user interfaces" explores how companion agents can maintain sustained, meaningful interactions with users. With a career spanning over a decade, Wallis’s research remains essential for anyone studying the social dynamics of autonomous systems, offering both theoretical insights and practical lessons for designing robots that people will actually engage with.