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David Hanson is an American robotics designer and researcher, best known as the creator of a series highly realistic humanoid robots. Hanson was educated as a designer and artist. In 1996, Hanson received a BFA in film/animation/video (FAV) from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). While a student at RISD, Hanson tinkered with robotics and AI at Brown University.

In addition to hardware development, Hanson and his company (Hanson Robotics Inc) develop "conversational personnas." Hanson's robots use speech recognition software, natural language processing, computer vision, and Hanson's own AI systems for responsive animations and 3D spatial reasoning and sensory fusion. Hanson has also created "robotic humanoid sculptures" named K-Bot, Vera, and Eva (now at the University of the West of England (UWE), in Bristol). Hanson's latest robot, the androgynous android (or "androgynoid") Jules, also now resides at UWE, for use in cognitive science research and AI development.