Roberta Cabral Mota

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About

Dr. Roberta Cabral Mota is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction (HRI), with a focus on social trust dynamics between humans and autonomous systems. Her most-cited work, “Playing the ‘trust game’ with robots: Social strategies and experiences” (2016, 29 citations), investigates how people assess robot trustworthiness during social HRI, revealing that humans apply social strategies—like those used with other people—when interacting with robots, even while neuroscience suggests distinct cognitive processing. This foundational study bridges social psychology and robotics, demonstrating that trust is not merely a technical reliability metric but a socially constructed experience. Dr. Mota’s contributions illuminate the subtle ways users anthropomorphize robots, shaping design principles for more intuitive and accepted robotic assistants. Her work has influenced subsequent studies on robot ethics, transparency, and long-term human-robot relationships. By empirically showing that people “play” trust games with machines, she has helped define a critical research agenda: understanding how social expectations and cognitive biases affect cooperation with AI. Dr. Mota’s insights are essential for engineers and social scientists alike, offering a human-centered lens for building trustworthy, socially aware robots.