hanpe82

Hannah Pelikan

Postdoc

I am curious about humans, robots and their interaction. Currently, I am particularly interested in the encounters between autonomous robots and people in public spaces. My work combines studies of Social Interaction and Human-Computer Interaction. 

Interacting with mobile autonomous systems

I take an ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA) perspective on human-robot interaction. I study robots in the world, such as homes, workplaces and public settings, capturing everyday interaction through video recordings.

In the past ten years, I have studied Starship delivery robots, EasyMile and Navya autonomous shuttle buses, the DaVinci Surgical System, Anki’s toy robot Cozmo and Aldebaran’s humanoid Nao. In my PhD, explored sound as a communication resource for robots and I developed interaction design methods for robot sound design.

My research contributes:

  • Video ethnographic studies of human-robot interaction, demonstrating how humans practically support robot autonomy
  • Interaction design methods that can bridge between analysis of social interaction and iterative prototyping
  • Interactional and embodied theories of human sociality and artificial intelligence

Online presence

Google Scholar

My profile on Google Scholar.

Website

Visit my website for more information about my research.

Research

Current projects

Responsible AI UK International Partnership project:

Understanding Robot Autonomy in Public

I lead the seminar AI in Society

The seminar series offers an interdisciplinary forum for discussing Humanities and Social Science perspectives on artificial intelligence. We trace the historical fascination with building smart machines and discuss implications that machine learning has on our everyday lives, culture and society.

Research environment

Publications

2025

Ilaria Torre, Sarah Schömbs, Katie Winkle, Sara Ljungblad, Erik Lagerstedt, Maria Teresa Parreira, Hannah Pelikan (2025) Sustainability-4-HRI, HRI-4-Sustainability Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, p. 1991-1993 (Conference paper) Continue to DOI
Hannah Pelikan, Bilge Mutlu, Stuart Reeves (2025) Making Sense of Public Space for Robot Design Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, p. 152-162 (Conference paper) Continue to DOI
Hannah Pelikan, Fanjun Bu, Wendy Ju (2025) The people behind the robots: How wizards wrangle robots in public deployments Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25)., Article 736 (Conference paper) Continue to DOI

2024

Hannah Pelikan, Katie Winkle, David Porfirio (2024) Designing Human-Robot Interactions: A StEER Tutorial ADJUNCT PROCEEDINGS OF THE 13TH NORDIC CONFERENCE ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION, NORDICHI 2024, Article 52 (Conference paper) Continue to DOI
Franziska Babel, Sam Thellman, Hannah Pelikan, Hatice Sahin Ippoliti, Tom Ziemke (2024) 2nd Workshop on Cars As Social Agents (CarSA): Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human-Vehicle Interaction ADJUNCT PROCEEDINGS OF THE 13TH NORDIC CONFERENCE ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION, NORDICHI 2024, Article 45 (Conference paper) Continue to DOI

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