Robots are a part of our everyday lives. How do we - as people - respond to them? And what does a robot have to look like so we accept it and consider it useful instead of being scared or negating it?  Univ. Prof. Martina Mara (Linz Institute of Technology, JKU) focuses on these questions and more. Her cutting-edge research impressed the jury and Federal Minister Margarete Schramböck presented Prof. Mara with the FutureZone Award in front of an audience of over 500 representatives from the Austrian tech industry.

During acceptance speech, Prof. Mara warned against perpetuating outdated stereotypes and negative images of women as these are long “obsolete”. The research added, “We have to be careful not to go back to archaic role models.”