I am a professor of Human-Robot Interaction at the School of Engineering and Computer Science, the University of Hertfordshire. I am currently director of the Robotics Research Group but also I direct Robot House and Kaspar projects.

I am the University Theme Champion in Information and Security. I coordinated and completed the Accompany and SCRIPT projects funded by the framework 7 programme of the European Community.

My research is focused on human-robot interaction and is applied in the context of rehabilitation, assistive technology and more recently, over the past 7 years, takes an interest on deep learning and machine learning approaches for HRI.

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Dr Diego R. Faria is a Reader in Robotics and Intelligent Adaptive Systems at the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science of University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK. He is the head of the CoPERAS Lab (Cognitive, Perception and Emotion for Robotics and Autonomous Systems). From Jul/2016 to Mar/2022 he was a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at Aston University, Birmingham, UK. Dr Diego R. Faria has coordinated multiples scientific projects in partnership with several European Universities and EU / British Companies, summing up over £3M, funded by the European Commission, UK national funding agencies (EPSRC, Royal Society, Newton Fund and Innovate-UK), the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technolgy, IEEE RAS-SIGHT and the Brazilian agency CONFAP / Araucaria Foundation. The projects are related to Assistive Technology, Cognitive Robotics, Brain-Computer Interfaces, Artificial Perception, AI and Machine Learning applied to multiple contexts, including social and affective robotics, autonomous vehicles and adaptive intelligent systems. From 2014 to 2016, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Systems and Robotics, Portugal, where he collaborated on several projects funded by the European Commission and the Portuguese government in the areas of Robotics, AI, and Assistive Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Cognitive Robotics) from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, in 2014. He holds a MSc. degree in Computer Science from the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), Brazil in 2005. In 2001 he obtained a B.Tech. degree in Informatics Technology (data computing), and a specialization (PGDip) in Computer Science, State University of Londrina (UEL) in 2002. He is reviewer of the most important Robotics conferences world-wide and the highest impact journals in the field of Robotics, Pattern Recognition, Brain-Computer Interfaces, and Applied Machine Learning. He has published several scientific papers in high impact journals and international conferences available at http://shorturl.at/dlos6

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Dr Catherine Menon is a principal lecturer within the robotics research group. Her research focuses on the intersection between safety and ethics in autonomous systems. She was PI on the AAIP funded feasibility project Assuring safety and social credibility and is a member of the BSI AMT/10 and AMT/10/1 Committees, providing UK input into ISO/TC 299 (standardisation in robotics) and BS 8611 (ethical design and application of robotic devices).

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As the manager of Robot House, Patrick coordinates all research activities inside the house, supports internal and external collaborators in using the facilities, and advises them while conducting research. At the same time, he maintains the robots and all the other interactive technology in the house. Patrick has extensive expertise in social human-robot interaction and experimentation and is highly skilled with a large array of robotic and sensing technologies.

He is also a supervisor of several PhD students and a Visiting Lecturer at the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science, teaching advanced research topics in computer science and other modules.

Patrick is currently a CoI of the UKRI TAS hub's pump priming project Kaspar explains and an advisory board member of the Norwegian project Human Interactive Robotics in Healthcare (HIRo). He was also a CoI of the AAIP funded feasibility project Assuring safety and social credibility. Previously, he been a postdoctoral researcher in the Robot House 2.0 project, an EPSRC strategic equipment grant, and in the Cognitive Service Robotics Apartment, a large-scale project within the DFG-funded excellence cluster CITEC where he was a member of the Cognitive Systems Engineering group.

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Gabriella is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Hertfordshire. She completed her PhD in the field of Ethology analyzing Human-Dog Interactions, after which she transferred her skills to the field of human-robot interactions. Gabriella has extensive experience in the fields of human-robot interactions and robot-assisted therapy for children with autism. She participated in several large-scale European projects such as LIREC and BabyRobot, as well as in the EPSRC funded project Trustworthy Robotic Assistants. More recently, she has also been involved as a CoI of the UKRI TAS hub's pump priming round one project Kaspar explains, the EPSRC Network+ project EMERGENCE, the EU ERASMUS+ EMBOA project, and the Kaspar for Speech and Language Therapy project funded by the Baily Thomas Charitable Fund.

Dr Abolfazl Zaraki is Senior Lecturer in Robotics at the Computer Science department of the University of Hertfordshire. Before joining UH, he was a lecturer at the School of Engineering and a member of the Research Centre in AI, Robotics and Human-Machine Systems (IROHMS) at Cardiff University, Cardiff. He was the Co-chair of the Human-Like Artificial Intelligence (AI) working group and a member of the IROHMS leadership team.

He received a master's degree in mechatronics and automatic control engineering from University Technology Malaysia, Malaysia, in 2010, and a PhD degree in automatic robotic and bioengineering from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2014. Between 2014 and 2019, he worked as Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow at different research institutions in Italy and the UK.

In the past, Abolfazl worked on European projects EASEL (Expressive Agents for Symbiotic Education and Learning), BabyRobot - NextGen Social Robotics, JAMES (Joint Action for Multimodal Embodied Social Systems) and an Innovate UK funded project Piglet - Snake Robot Solution for Inspection in collaboration with industry.

Abolfazl's research interests include developing autonomous systems for social and industrial robotic platforms, trusted autonomy, closed-loop Human-Robot Interaction studies, and brain-computer interface (BCI) for research and assistive applications.

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Sílvia is a Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. She received an Industrial Engineering degree at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), a PAIR Master degree in Automated Production and Robotics at the Fundació CIM - UPC and a Robotics and Automation Master degree at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. She also received a Psychology degree at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). She was previously part of the now finished EU Horizon2020 BabyRobot project. Her research interests include social robotics, Human-Robot Interaction and design of robotic behaviours for children with autism.

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In his current role as a post-doctoral research fellow, Dr. Vignesh Velmurugan focuses on research within the Kaspar project, involving the development of robotic companions for educational purposes. He earned his PhD from the University of Hertfordshire, concentrating on rehabilitation robotics for stroke survivors, and continues to explore this area of study. Additionally, he holds master's degrees in robotics from Ecole Centrale de Nantes and Warsaw University of Technology.

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Ali is a PhD student at the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Hertfordshire. His research focuses on human-robot interaction, with the objective of trust between robots and humans.

Avoiding over-trust and lack of trust are noteworthy challenges in HRI. There are various aspects which should be considered to balance the level of trust, and that is what makes this field significantly special and impressive.

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