Shanti Sumartojo
Monash University, Caulfield Hospital, Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute
Papers
12
Total Citations
270
H-Index
7
About
Shanti Sumartojo is a leading researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction, urban technology, and social geography, whose work has profoundly shaped how we understand robots as participants in everyday public life. With a body of work accumulating over 260 citations, Sumartojo has made significant contributions to questions of how robots are perceived, designed, and deployed in shared civic spaces. Her research draws innovatively on new materialism and spatial theory, developing original frameworks such as "robotic liveliness" and "contingent autonomy" to capture the dynamic, unpredictable relationships between robots, people, and environments. A distinctive strength of her scholarship is its commitment to participatory and co-design methodologies, ensuring that public voices shape robotic futures rather than being subjected to them — work reflected in widely cited studies on user expectations and participatory prototyping. Sumartojo has also engaged critically with the policy implications of autonomous robots and their embeddedness in AI-driven urbanism, exploring how robots produce and reorganize social space. Her interdisciplinary approach — bridging design, geography, and robotics — makes her an essential voice for researchers grappling with the social dimensions of emerging technologies in public life.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Robots in public spaces: implications for policy design50 citations · 2021
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- 4Lively robots: robotic technologies in COVID-1937 citations · 2021
- 5User Expectations of Robots in Public Spaces: A Co-design Methodology32 citations · 2020
- 6Imagining public space robots of the near-future29 citations · 2021
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- 8Contingent autonomy: Robotic encounters in an uncertain world5 citations · 2024
- 9Robots in AI urbanism5 citations · 2023
- 10