Human-robot relationships

• Helena Webb, Marina Jirotka, Alan F.T. Winfield, and Katie Winkle. 2019. Human-robot relationships and the development of responsible social robots. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, March. https://doi.org/10.1145/3363384.3363396
• Stratton, A., Singamaneni, P. T., Goyal, P., Alami, R., & Mavrogiannis, C. (2026). How human motion prediction quality shapes social robot navigation performance in constrained spaces. Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Hri ’26, 1060–1069. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757279.3788664

Triggering moral psychology

• Tan, X. Z., Vázquez, M., Carter, E. J., Morales, C. G., and Steinfeld, A., Inducing Bystander Interventions during Robot Abuse with Social Mechanisms. In Proceedings of the 13th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) (pp. 169–177), 2018.
• Kahn, P. H., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., Gill, B. T., Ruckert, J. H., Shen, S., Gary, H. E., Reichert, A. L., Freier, N. G., & Severson, R. L. (2012). Do People Hold a Humanoid Robot Morally Accountable for the Harm It Causes? Proceedings of the Seventh Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI ’12, 33–40. https://doi.org/10.1145/2157689.2157696

New roles / jobs for humans

• Lee, H. R., Fox, S., Cheon, E., & Shorey, S. (2025). Minding the Stop-gap: Attending to the “Temporary,” Unplanned, and Added Labor of Human-Robot Collaboration in Context. Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI ’25, 34–44. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3721488.3721497

Robotics work behind the scenes

• Simão, H., Hsu, L.-J., Cagiltay, B., Neto, I., Wallbridge, C. D., Santos, L., Rocha, F., Levinson, L., Sequeira, J. S., Guerreiro, T., & Alves-Oliveira, P. (2026). Emotional entanglements and emotional sustainability in HRI. Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Hri ’26, 1098–1107. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757279.3785587
• Daniel J. Rea, Denise Geiskkovitch, and James E. Young. 2017. Wizard of Awwws: Exploring Psychological Impact on the Researchers in Social HRI Experiments. In Proceedings of the Companion of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’17), 21–29. https://doi.org/10.1145/3029798.3034782

Anti-robot sentiments

Resistance to Autonomous Cars

• Dylan Moore, Rebecca Currano, Michael Shanks, and David Sirkin. 2020. Defense Against the Dark Cars: Design Principles for Griefing of Autonomous Vehicles. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’20), 201–209. https://doi.org/10.1145/3319502.3374796
• Nordhoff, S. (2024). Resistance towards autonomous vehicles (AVs). Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 26, 101117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2024.101117

Anti-robot sentiments in social media

• Rosén, J., Tran, P. B.-L., & Geiskkovitch, D. Y. (2026). Clankers in the cultural imagination: Online robophobia and its implications for human-robot interaction. Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Hri ’26, 1313–1321.

AI for "better" robot design

LLMs for more private robotics

• Grabler, R., Frijns, H. A., Hirschmanner, M., & Koeszegi, S. T. (2024). Privacy Agents: Utilizing Large Language Models to Safeguard Contextual Integrity in Elderly Care. ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction 2024 - Privacy-Aware Robotics Workshop.

Robot interaction (physical) safety using AI

• Jindal, A., Kalashnikov, D., Chang, O., Garikapati, D., Majumdar, A., Sermanet, P., & Sindhwani, V. (2025). Can AI Perceive Physical Danger and Intervene? https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21651 AND accompaying website/material https://asimov-benchmark.github.io/v2/

More on anthopomorphism and other effects

• Lebrun, B., Bartneck, C., & Vonasch, A. J. (2026). The role of agent’s anthropomorphism in shaping phantom costs. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757279.3788659

Building on the notion of cuteness as a dark pattern

• Perugia, G., Ankersmit, S., Jansen, N., & Guidi, S. (2026). The ‘aww’ factor: Robot cuteness as a catalyst for emotional responses and caretaking tendencies. Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Hri ’26, 687–696. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757279.3785591

Robot ownership

• Ownership: Comparing Public, Corporate, and Private Ownership Models. We Robot 2026. https://werobot.cdn.prismic.io/werobot/adQBb5GXnQHGZSt2_WR2026_Sheidlower_Robot_Ownership.pdf
• Moon, A., & Rhim, J. (2024). Rosie is a rental: What thriving interactive robotics could mean for our society. In W. Barfield, U. Pagallo, & Y. H. Weng (Eds.), Cambridge handbook on law, policy, and regulations for HRI. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009386708.022