Marie Schwed Shenker, PhD candidate at eLaw, has successfully completed an intensive summer school on Social Robotics at Utrecht University. The program offered a comprehensive mix of theoretical instruction and hands-on experience, providing her with the skills to design and experiment with social robots in a responsible and impactful manner.
Throughout the course, Marie developed the ability to select and apply design methods for social robots across various domains, including education, healthcare, and hospitality. The program also enhanced her capacity to effectively present social robot scenarios to academic and professional audiences.
In addition to mastering the theoretical aspects of human-robot interaction, Marie gained a deep understanding of how design elements such as embodiment and anthropomorphism influence the way humans interact with robots. She also acquired practical skills in building and configuring social robots for specific purposes, setting up experiments to assess their effectiveness, analyzing the resulting data, and presenting her findings through a scientific mini-paper and group presentation.