March 2026
Kerstin presents the paper “Towards a Systematic Model of the Effects of Transparency Utterances on Calibrating Trust in Social Robots” (co-authored with Matous Jelínek) at the Human-Robot Interaction Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.
November 2025
Kerstin presents at the artificial sociality workshop in Siegen: https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/en/events/conference-artificial-sociality/
Ali Asadi presented a paper, co-authored by Kerstin Fischer, titled ‘Beyond video conferencing: Design criteria for telepresence robot integration in educational environments’ in the 18th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (iCERi) in Seville, Spain.
September 2025
22 September 2025: 100% Climate Neutrality Conference, Sønderborg, Denmark. Kerstin hands over the award for the Behavior Change Challenge to four SDU students for the arts competition they have organized: Bridging Sustainability and Art: Changing Behaviour Through Organic Solar Cells.
Helena presents a poster on framing vertical farming and how it influences what people taste.
Ali Asadi and Kerstin Fischer present their poster on exploring the perceived value of organic solar cell products at the 100% Climate Neutrality Conference 2025 in Sønderborg, Denmark.
August 2025
25-28 August 2025: 40th International LAUD Symposium, Landau, Germany. Helena presents a talk on framing of vertical farming products and of organic solar cells.
Kerstin presents ‘The effects of naming novel green technologies on creativity and ideas for innovation’ co-authored by Ali Asadi.
Matous Jelinek and Ali Asadi present a paper on the effects of the relative timing of emotional expression in human-robot interactions, which they wrote together with Caroline Bech and Kerstin Fischer in the 34th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
Kerstin presents an invited talk on Preventing Overtrust in Social Robots at the Scrita workshop on Trust, Acceptance and Social Cues in Human-Robot Interaction at the Ro-Man Conference. https://scrita.herts.ac.uk/2025/
July 2025
Together with Yoshiko Matsumoto, Kerstin organizes an IPrA panel on Towards a Pragmatics of Understanding in Brisbane, Australia, and presents a talk on The Pragmatics of Understanding Robots.
May 2025
Kerstin presents The Effect of the Timing of Emotional Expression on Robot Persuasiveness and Personalized Social Proof for Persuasive Human-Robot Interaction at the Persuasive Technology Conference, Limassol, Cyprus: https://2025.persuasivetech.org/program/
March 2025
Kerstin presents an invited talk on How Artificial Agents Become Social Agents at Stanford University in the framework of the transnation-cocreation workshop https://transnationinnovation.de/
January 2025
January 24th, 2025: Kerstin acts as opponent in Salla Jarske’s PhD defense at the University of Tampere, Finland, on ‘Strange Machines: Robot Sociality as a Challenge for Human-Centred Design.
January 23rd, 2025: Kerstin is interviewed by Ali Tocher about Robots, depiction, robot voices and other topics – listen to the podcast here: https://shows.acast.com/what-do-robots-sound-like/episodes/prof-kerstin-fischer-depiction-expectation-interaction-resea
January 7th, 2025: Kerstin gives a talk When Robots Become Interaction Partners at the Technical University of Dresden in the framework of the Gender Lectures https://tu-dresden.de/gsw/ressourcen/dateien/genderconceptgroup/veranstaltungen-der-gcg/gender-lectures/ws24-25/GL_WS24_Poster_programm_final.pdf?lang=en
December 2024
December 19th: Ali Asadi wins the Discovery Grant by SDU. The grant helps Ali to design the prototype of a telepresence robot that is suitable for educational settings.
November 2024
Nov 21st: KF gives a talk on The Collaborative Construction of Robots as Interaction Partners at the Workshop "Interacting with everyday technologies" at the Institut für deutsche Sprache in Mannheim.
Nov 15th: KF gives a talk on Interacting with Robots: Deceived, Needy, Mindless? at the ‘Artificial Friday: Linguistic Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence’ https://artificial-friday.de/en/english/ organized by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
Nov 6-8th: Jaap Ham, professor for Human-Technology Interaction at the Technical University of Eindhoven visits the HRI Lab and gives a talk on Personalizing Persuasive Robots.
October 2024
Oct 23rd-25th: KF co-organizes the International Conference on Social Robotics as Program Chair; Matous Jelinek presents a paper on how The Content of Transparency Matters, in which he presents an empirical study of the effects of different messages on trust in the respective robot. KF co-organizes a workshop on Workshop Robotics, AI, and Humans—A Roadmap to Human-Centered Application Development with Aurélie Clodic and Johanna Seibt at the Internation Conference on Social Robotics ICSR’24, Odense, Denmark. Furthermore, she presents a poster on robot touch in the kick-off workshop of the Robot Touch network, funded by the DFF.
October 6th: Kerstin presents an experiment that elicits people’s associations with different possible names for organic solar cells at the Annual Conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association in Osnabrück.
October 1st: Ali Asadi starts a postdoctoral researcher position at SDU in Green Technology Adoption project. The project is a part of the SDU Climate Cluster Elite Center on Solar Energy Conversion and Storage, SOLEN.
September 2024
September 16th: Kerstin hands out the Behavior Change Challenge award at the 100% Climate Neutrality Conference in Sonderborg: https://event.sdu.dk/100climateneutralityconference2024/programme. The award went to Kerstin’s three students who have collaborated with the Optics Lab in Sonderborg on reducing energy consumption.
June 2024
June 27th: KF introduces representatives of Danish businesses to AI at the Dandy Business Park in Vejle.
April 2024
April 16th: Ali Asadi successfully defends his PhD thesis, titled ‘Empathy through Robot Moderation: Improving Telepresence Robot Users’ Experience’.
Ali Asadi defends his thesis ‘Empathy through Robot Moderation:
Improving Telepresence Robot Users’ Experience’.
March 2024
Kerstin Fischer gives a keynote lecture on ‘Social Robots and Trust Calibration’ at the Pioneers Workshop at the Human-Robot Interaction Conference HRI’24 in Boulder, Colorado.
Matous Jelinek presents a Late-Breaking Report on the work on dialog design he carried out in collaboration with the Honda Research Institute in Tokyo during his 3-months stay there.
Kerstin Fischer spends two weeks as a visiting scholar at Stanford University, working with Herb Clark, Yoshiko Matsumoto, David Sirkin and Becky Curano.
February 2024
Feb 29th-March 1st: KF presents the keynote talk on Verständigung mit Robotern at the conference of the Fachgruppe Mediensprache - Mediendiskurse der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft (DGPuK) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. https://www.wmk.itz.kit.edu/4395.php
Kerstin Fischer organizes a guest lecture by Bjarne Oldrup on ‘Sustainable Web-design’ in Kolding.
Kerstin Fischer presents the keynote talk on ‘Reden mit Robotern. Über die Verständigung mit künstlichen Agenten‘ at the workshop on Verstehen und Verständigung im digitalen Raum, der DGPuK- Fachtagung Mediensprache-Mediendiskurse 2024 at the Karlsruhe Institut of Technology.
January 2024
Jan 1: Ali Asadi submitted his PhD thesis, titled “Empathy through robot moderation: improving telepresence robot users’ experience”.
Kerstin Fischer serves as opponent for Razan Jaber’s thesis ‘Towards Designing Better Speech. Agent Interaction - Using Eye Gaze for Interaction’ at Stockholm University in Stockholm.
International Conference on Social Robotics (October 2024)
December 2023
As the coordinator of the Erasmus+ project InClass, Kerstin Fischer presents the project results to teachers, students and politicians at the beautiful Basilica San Giacomo in Naples.
November 2023
Kerstin Fischer leaves for one month at the Danish Institute in Athens
Kerstin Fischer serves as external examiner for Agnes Axelson’s thesis on ‘Adaptive Robot Presenters: Modelling Grounding in Multimodal Interaction’ at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
October 2023
Kerstin Fischer visits the InClass project partner EOS for a project meeting in Romania.
October 25-27: Ali Asadi presents findings of two experiments, titled “Mitigating the negative effect of telepresence robots via an empathy-eliciting robot moderator” and “The effect of performance features of telepresence robots on the personality perception of their users” at IEEE METROXRAINE 2023 in Milan, Italy.
Ali Asadi wins the best paper award for the paper on the performance features of telepresence robots at the IEEE METROXRAINE 2023 in Milan, Italy.
September 2023
Kerstin Fischer presents work on the effects of the naming of organic solar cells on their innovation potential (results from her SCC project) at the 100% Climate Neutrality Conference in Sonderborg. Furthermore, she organizes a special session on local initiatives for behavior change in Southern Denmark.
Furthermore, Kerstin Fischer presents the winners of the Behavior Change Challenge award 2023 at the climate conference.
Kerstin Fischer gives the opening keynote on ‘Robots as Social Actors’ at the ‘Social HRI Summer School’ in Checiny in Poland.
September 2023 - November 2023
Matous Jelinek works at the Honda Research Institute Japan, engaging in a project on multimodal dialogue development for the social robot Haru, focusing on behavioral change coaching. He conducts experiments to evaluate the dialogue and perceived trustworthiness of Haru in this setting.
August 2023
Kerstin Fischer teaches a two-week summer school on Behavior Change at the University of Southern Denmark in Sonderborg.
Kerstin Fischer presents a paper on ‘Defining Interaction as Coordination Benefits both HRI Research and Robot Development: Entering Service Interactions at the 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN).
July 2023
July 9-14: The whole team attends the 18th International Pragmatics Conference; Matous Jelinek contributes to the panel on the pragmatics of trust with a presentation titled "Being Transparent about Competence: Using Transparency in Trust Calibration." Ali Asadi presents findings of an experiment titles “Robot mediation: facilitating participation in multiparty interaction”; Kerstin Fischer organizes a panel on ‘The Pragmatics of Trust in Artificial Agents’ with Bracha Nir and gives a talk arguing that ‘Overtrust in Social Robots is Inevitable’. Kerstin Fischer also gives a talk on ‘Field testing an interactive language technology in an elderly care facility’ with Rosalyn Langedijk.
Beatrice Bernasconi presents the work she has carried during her internship in the HRI Lab Sonderborg under Kerstin Fischer’s guidance: Russian čto li as a modal particle: Testing pragmatic hypotheses with robots.
June 2023
Kerstin Fischer serves as opponent in Natalia Calvo Barajas’ PhD defense on ‘Exploring Multidimensional Trust - Shaping Child-Robot Creative Collaborations in Education’ at the University of Uppsala, Sweden.
June 5-7: Ali Asadi presents the findings of an experiment, titled “The effect of an empathy-eliciting intervention on the perception of telepresence robot users” in the 19th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and Its Social Impacts (ARSO 2023) in Berlin, Germany.
May 2023
Kerstin Fischer and Ali Asadi introduce the InClass project and a telepresence robot to children and families at the robotics fair at the Universe Sciencepark in Nordborg.
Together with InClass partner Blue Ocean Robotics, Kerstin Fischer organizes a three-day workshop on telepresence robots in schools in Odense and presents the results from a year’s work to a broad public.
Kerstin Fischer presents an invited talk on Influencing Social Dynamics: A Robot Mediator for Increasing Empathy towards Remote Participants at the ICRA conference in London.
April 2023
April 28th: Matous Jelinek attends the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Hamburg, contributing to a workshop on trust in social robots with his article on trust violation and repair in social robotics.
April 22nd: In the framework of forskningsdøgn, Matous Jelinek guides a codesign workshop on behavior change in Alsion, Sonderborg, utilizing 'Nudging' as a technique, in an event co-organized with the library. Ali Asadi and student assistant Emma Söderlund serve as receptionists on telepresence robots.
Kerstin Fischer presents a paper on Persuasive Robots in the Field (with Rosalyn Langedijk) at the Persuasive Technology Conference in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
March 2023
March 13-16: At the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction in Stockholm, Matous Jelinek presents a joint paper on the impact of speech and movement in interactions with a mobile hand disinfection robot, and Kerstin Fischer a collaborative paper with Oskar Palinko and Franziska Fischer on the effects of persuasive utterances on a handsanitizer robot.
Kerstin Fischer presents a talk on ‘Interaction as Coordination for HRI Research and Robot Development’ at the AAAI Spring Symposium, March 27-29, 2023, Burlingame, San Francisco.
Ali Asadi spends two months at University of Naples Federico II in Italy, conducting an experiment in a middle school with the aim of improving robot-mediated communication and evaluating conversation capabilities of a robot moderator.
February 23rd, 2023: As part of the opening ceremony of the new Green Corner at the library in Sonderborg, Kerstin Fischer leads a co-design workshop on the green future of the Alsion.
December 2023
November 2022
November 22nd: Kerstin Fischer presents the invited talk “What kind of sociality are social robots aiming for?” at the workshop on Embodied AI and Social Robots in Aalborg.
November 15th - 16th: Kerstin Fischer presents the Depiction Model at the SFactor meeting in Copenhagen
November 7th 2021: Kerstin Fischer presents the Dahrin network at the ‘Industry Day’ in Sonderborg
November 7th 2021: During the Behavior Change Challenge award ceremony on U109 at Alsion, Ali Asadi and Beatrice Bernasconi are awarded the first prize for their work on "Inducing behavior change via visual interventions."
October 2022
October 31st: Kerstin Fischer and the whole team present the HRI Lab to Sebastian Mernild from the SDU Climate Cluster
October 24th: Kerstin Fischer presents‚ Doing Linguistics Using Robots‘ in the framework of the Ringvorlesung: Computer, Mensch, Sprache – interdisziplinäre Perspektiven an der Schnittstelle Sprachforschung/Informatik at the University of Oldenburg https://uol.de/fk3/veranstaltungen/ringvorlesung-wise-2022/23
October 11th: Kerstin Fischer presented ‘How robots can facilitate human creativity,‘ an invited presentation at the Einst4ine doctoral consortium meeting in Odense, Denmark
October 7th: Kerstin Fischer gives a talk on Persuasive Technologies at the First mover meeting, organized by Jane Petersen.
September 2022
September 30th: Kerstin Fischer serves as evaluator at the defense Mike Ligthard
September 26th: With Klarissa Lueg and Simon Jebsen, Kerstin Fischer organizes a workshop on ”Between greenwashing and sustainable business models: Framing climate change action” at the 100% Climate Neutrality Conference in Sonderborg. Kerstin presents a talk on behavior change theory and positive framing. Ali Asadi presents his study of persuasive communication to reduce runtime of screens in the classrooms at the Alsion, Matous presents his work on persuasive robots.
August 2022
August 31st: Matous starts an internship with Honda Research Institute Japan.
August 16th-18th: Robophilosophy Conference, Finland: Kerstin Fischer & Johanna Seibt present their joint talk From Recipient Design and Sociomorphing to Experienced Sociality
August 8th-15th: Our international partners from the Traffic Network, Wendy Ju and David Sirkin, as well as Shelley Tzedek visit us in Kolding for a week.
June 2022
June 27th-July 1st: Kerstin Fischer teaches design thinking, behavior change and sustainable construction at the Sustainability Academy
June 21st 2022: Kerstin Fischer serves as invited evaluator for the Personalized Robots Doctoral Network, Barcelona
June 2nd, 2022 Kerstin Fischer presents an invited lecture on ‘Using Robots to Study Speaking Style’ at the Open Media and Information Lab in Israel with a focus on the effects of speaking style on creativity.
May 2022
May 4th, 2022: In her guest lecture ‘Using Robots to Study Speaking Styles’ at the University of Bonn, Germany (Seminar ‘Research Trends’), Kerstin Fischer presented several experiments that show that speaking style influences how persuasive the speaker is, how creative the listeners are, and how well they perform a learning task.
April 2022
Kerstin Fischer and Matous Jelinek present the ‘tiny habit’ method at a codesign workshop they organized in collaboration with the library, and they give a talk on persuasive robots.
March 2022
March 28th – April 7th 2022: Kerstin Fischer, Kristian Mortensen and Johannes Wagner visit our partners at Cornell Tech in New York and at Stanford University
March 24th, 2022: Matous gives a talk about persuasive robots and presents the lab and the DAHRIN network at the R-22 conference in Odense.
March 2nd - 4th 2022 the HRI Lab team supports Oliver Niebuhr in the organization of the ESSV conference. Kerstin gives a talk on The Voice of Creativity: Effects of Pitch Range in the Voice of a Robot Facilitator (with Oliver Niebuhr and Ali Asadi), and on The Effects of the Online Visualization of Acoustic-Prosodic Features of Speech on Speakers' Productions (with Oliver Niebuhr) and introduce the conference participants to the HRI Lab Sonderborg.
December 2021
December 6th – 9th, 2021: the HRI Lab team supports Oliver Niebuhr in the organization of the TAI conference. Kerstin Fischer presents Towards a Prosodic Visualization Tool for Language Learners (with Oliver Niebuhr, Maria Alm, Ali Asadi, Åsa Abelin and Egil Albertsen)
June 2021
Kerstin Fischer & Rosalyn Langedijk present the talk Toasting as an Interactional Frame for Embodied Human-Robot Interaction at the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) Conference.
Watch the video: Toasting as an Interactional Frame for Embodied Human-Robot Interaction
Kerstin Fischer presents joint work with Yoshiko Matsumoto (Stanford) on crosscultural differences in quotidian framing.
Kerstin organizes the Behavior Change Challenge 2021. Rosalyn Langedijk is on the committee. Master student Selina Eisenberger wins the competition. Listen to the podcast here.
Kerstin Fischer presents the talk How feasible is ‘doing being oblivious’ on a robot? at the Movin Meeting in the framework of the traffic network.
May 2021
Kerstin Fischer presents a talk on Robots for Studying Linguistics at the Linguistics Colloquium in Gothenburg.
April 2021
Matouš Jelínek and Kerstin Fischer present a joint paper The Role of Emotional Expression in Behavior Change Coaching by a Social Robot at the Persuasive Technology 2021 Conference hosted virtually by Bournemouth University, UK. See the presentation here
At Forskningens Døgn (research festival), Sonderborg, Kerstin Fischer and Maria Alm present the talk Taking your Speech melody with you: Intonation in the first and second language.
Kerstin Fischer presents a guest lecture in Bale, Switzerland, on What Makes Robots Persuasive.
Kerstin Fischer presents a guest lecture at Women in Voice, NL.
March 2021
Matouš Jelínek and Kerstin Fischer present a joint paper The Role of a Social Robot in Behavior Change Coaching at the virtual 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.
The paper by Kerstin Fischer, Lakshadeep Naik, Rosalyn Langedijk, Timo Baumann, Matous Jelinek and Oskar Palinko Initiating Human-Robot Interactions Using Incremental Speech Adaptation receives a nomination for the Best Late Breaking Report at the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. The team is present with three further project reports.
Kerstin Fischer interviews entrepreneur David Ireland on green transition through asymmetric innovation. Listen to the interview here.
February 2021
Kerstin Fischer presents the work carried out at SDU-Sonderborg in the framework of the Smooth project presentation.
Kerstin Fischer interviews Entrepreneur David Ireland on founding a green energy company. Listen to the interview here.
Furthermore, she records an interview with Professor Stefan Schaltegger, the director of the Center for Sustainability Management at the Leuphana University in Lüneburg. Listen to the interview here.
Januar 2021
Kerstin Fischer is interviewed by the German journal Zeit Wissen on hesitation markers.
December 2020
Kerstin Fischer and Oliver Niebuhr record a podcast on persuasive technologies. Listen to the podcast here.
November 2020
Kerstin Fischer serves as Alt.HRI co-chair for the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.
Kerstin Fischer and Rosalyn M. Langedijk participate in the conference Influence, Manipulation and Seduction - Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Persuasive Language with their talk about "Persuasive human-robot dialog in the wild".
Watch the presentation here.
Kerstin Fischer presents joint work at the International Conference on Social Robotics (ISCR 2020) with the following talk “Gaze-Speech Coordination Influences the Persuasiveness of Human-Robot Dialog in the Wild”. See the poster here, and watch the presentation here.
Official announcement of the Behavior Change Challenge 2021. Read the announcement here.
Kerstin Fischer and Oliver Niebuhr publish a podcast on the "Behavior Change Challenge" in the framework of the Green Alsion Initiative. Listen to the podcast. Get more information about the Behavior Change Challenge. Read more about Green Alsion.
October 2020
Our master student Karen Fucinato gives an online presentation “User Expectations and Preferences to How Social Robots Render Text Messages with Emojis” at the International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2020). Watch the presentation here.
Kerstin Fischer publishes a podcast on "The hidden costs of our digital lives" in the framework of the Green Alsion Initiative. Listen to the podcast here, and read more about Green Alsion here.
September 2020
Oskar Palinko, Lakshadeep Naik, Rosalyn M. Langedijk, Kerstin Fischer & Matous Jelinek carry out experiments with the Smooth robot at SDU Odense.
Kerstin Fischer and Rosalyn M. Langedijk give online presentations at the International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2020). Rosalyn M. Langedijk presents the poster Studying Drink-Serving Service Robots in the Real World, and Kerstin Fischer presents joint work with Lars Christian Jensen and Rosalyn M. Langedijk in the presentation Understanding the Perception of Incremental Robot Response in Human-Robot Interaction. Watch the presentation here.
June 2020
Kerstin Fischer, Rosalyn M. Langedijk & Selina Sara Eisenberger create a video in which they explain the incremental dialog as developed in the Smooth project (in Danish). Watch the video here (in Danish):
Kerstin Fischer is interviewed about chatbots by the Swiss online magazine Reformiert (in German).
April 2020
In the framework of the annual Sonderborg research festival, Kerstin Fischer and Maria Alm contribute with talks about their research. The research festival was cancelled due to the Corona shut down, but the talks are presented in the following two videos (you can see all the contributions from SDU Sonderborg on the official SDU webpage Forskningskanonen).
Presentation 1: Kerstin Fischer presents the talk "Persuasive Human-Robot Dialog" (in English)
March 2020
Jaap Ham from Eindhoven University of Technology visits Kerstin Fischer & Rosalyn M. Langedijk at the HRI-lab and gives a talk about “Persuasive Robots: The influence of personalization on persuasiveness”.
Kerstin Fischer & Oliver Niebuhr present online a Late-Breaking Report “Studying Language Attitudes Using Robots” at the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. See the poster here. Watch the presentation here.
Alicja Depka Prondzinska & Kerstin Fischer give an online presentation “Using Robots to Study the Perception of Feedback Cross-Culturally” at the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. Watch the presentation here.