Rate My Professor Farshid Amirabdollahian

Professor Farshid Amirabdollahian is Professor of Human-Robot Interaction in the Department of Computer Science within the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire. He directs the Robot House and Kaspar projects, serves as Principal Investigator at the University's Robot House facility, and acts as the University Theme Champion in Information and Security. A member of the Adaptive Systems Research Group and head of the Robotics Research Group, he teaches Robotics and AI to undergraduate students. His research specializations encompass human-robot interaction in rehabilitation, assistive and assessment robotics, human performance assessment through engaging interactions, robots for health and wellbeing, artificial intelligence, safe human-computer interaction, robot safety and ethics, statistics, mathematics, and deep learning and machine learning approaches for human-robot interaction. He contributes to the ISO TC299 working group developing standards for robots and robotic devices. Amirabdollahian coordinated the EU Framework 7-funded Accompany and SCRIPT projects focused on assistive robotics.

His career includes roles as Technical Director at THINKlab, University of Salford (2006-2008), where he was also part of the Centre for Rehabilitation and Human Performance Research; Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Rehabilitation Engineering Studies, Newcastle University (2003-2006), contributing to the i-match project; and Research Associate at the School of Cybernetics, University of Reading (2000-2003), involved in the GENTLE/s neurorehabilitation robot development with a pan-European team. Earlier, from 1990 to 1999, he held progressive software and hardware engineering positions, advancing to senior system analyst. Key publications include 'Would You Trust a (Faulty) Robot? Effects of Error, Task Type and Personality on Human-Robot Cooperation and Trust' (2015), 'Upper Limb Robot Mediated Stroke Therapy—GENTLE/s Approach' (2003), 'Training Modalities in Robot-Mediated Upper Limb Rehabilitation in Stroke: A Framework for Classification Based on a Systematic Review' (2014), 'Using the Humanoid Robot KASPAR to Autonomously Play Triadic Games and Facilitate Collaborative Play Among Children with Autism' (2014), 'Kaspar Explains: An Educational Platform using Causal Explanations to Support Children with Autism with Visual Perspective Taking' (2026), and 'Assistive Robotics for Healthy Aging: A Foundational Phenomenological Co-Design Exercise' (2026). His research has over 5,000 citations on Google Scholar.