POSTED: 11 Aug, 2025

While engineers often focus on functionality and reliability, real-world deployment reveals a deeper challenge: if people feel uneasy, confused, or disconnected when working with robots, adoption falters. This is especially true in manufacturing, where seamless human-robot collaboration is essential for productivity and safety. 

A new strategic project led by Dr Valeria Macalupu, postdoctoral researcher in QUT’s Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) program, aims to address this challenge by exploring how design affordances, such as physical form, materials, and expressive behaviours, can foster trust between humans and robots. Co-funded by the QUT Design Lab, the project is titled “What is trust really? Exploring Rich Interactions and Design Affordances in Human-Robot Interaction through Co-design.” 

Rather than treating trust as a by-product of performance, the project investigates how visual, tactile, and behavioural cues can signal intent, competence, and emotional safety. These cues are often overlooked in traditional engineering approaches but are critical to how people interpret and respond to robotic systems. 

The research will be developed and disseminated through a series of co-design workshops, iterative prototyping, and a public exhibition. The goal is to generate insights into how robots can be designed to feel more intuitive, approachable, and safe. 

For industry, this project offers practical design guidelines to help engineers and developers create robots that are not only functional but also intuitively acceptable to human users. In manufacturing contexts, this could mean smoother integration of collaborative robots, reduced training time, and improved worker satisfaction. 

More broadly, the project contributes to a growing body of research that sees trust not as a by-product of performance, but as a designable quality. By understanding how people interpret and respond to robots through their physical presence, this work supports the development of safer, more empathetic, and more effective robotic systems. 

Across the Centre, our postdoctoral research fellows lead a diverse range of projects, from long-term initiatives to shorter, more focused pieces of work. This latest project from Dr Macalupu exemplifies the kind of strategic, interdisciplinary work that drives innovation and impact across our programs. 

This project is jointly funded by the Australian Cobotics Centre and the QUT Design Lab.  

Read more about the project: Project 2.9: What is trust really? Exploring Rich Interactions and Design Affordances in Human-Robot Interaction through Co-design » Australian Cobotics Centre | ARC funded ITTC for Collaborative Robotics in Advanced Manufacturing

Get in touch with Valeria: v.chira@qut.edu.au