Lead researcher

Valeria Macalupú

Project based at

Lead Partner Organisation

Overview

Trust in robots is often assumed to emerge from technical reliability and performance. However, in real-world environments, especially in manufacturing, trust must also be felt. If workers hesitate, resist, or override robotic systems due to discomfort or misalignment with expectations, adoption fails. 

Led by Dr Valeria Macalupu and co-funded by the QUT Design Lab, this strategic project explores how design affordances such as physical form, materials, and expressive behaviours can foster trust in human-robot interactions. Through co-design, prototyping, and public engagement, the project investigates how visual, tactile, and behavioural cues can signal intent, competence, and emotional safety. 

The project will be completed across three phases: 

1. Co-design Workshops – Design academics, researchers, and students will participate in hands-on workshops to build low-fidelity robotic prototypes using unconventional materials like sand, glass, and paper. These artefacts will explore how different textures, shapes, and forms can embody trust—or its absence. Participants will reflect on their creations through guided discussions and interviews. 

1. Iterative Prototyping – Ten selected prototypes will be developed into mid-fidelity models with simple interactive behaviours, using Wizard of Oz techniques to simulate real-time responses. This phase will refine the physical and behavioural elements that most effectively communicate trust. 

1. Public Exhibition – The final prototypes will be showcased in an interactive exhibition. Visitors will engage with the robots and provide feedback on how trust is formed or challenged through sensory and material cues. 

Outcomes

This research will generate practical design guidelines to help engineers and developers build robots that are not only functional but also intuitively acceptable to human users. In manufacturing contexts, this could lead to smoother integration of collaborative robots, reduced training time, and improved worker satisfaction. 

More broadly, the project contributes to a growing body of research that treats trust as a designable quality. The speculative artefacts and insights produced will inform future developments in haptic feedback, motion behaviours, and physical form factors. 

This project is co-funded by the QUT Design Lab.