Social RoboticsA robot dog's affection can decide who leads a human team
Reichman University's HRI 2025 best paper showed favouritism from a robot shaped group leadership.
Researchers at Reichman University's Media Innovation Lab and the Technion paired two people with a robotic dog on a search task, without assigning a leader. When the robot showed a clear liking for one participant at the first meeting, that person usually took charge and the partner accepted it; when the robot treated both equally, leadership was shared. The paper won a best paper award in the behavioural research category at HRI 2025. It suggests that even simple affectionate gestures from a social robot can quietly reshape human group dynamics, which matters for robots placed in families, classrooms and workplaces.
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